


I Would Tell You I Love You, But...

by Lightstiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, EMT!Cas, M/M, hunter!dean, pre-season 3, spn au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightstiel/pseuds/Lightstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester gets into a car accident and Castiel Novak is his first responder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sappy Poem Blue

When you first meet someone in this situation, there is always that moment that you take to look them over.

            With women, generally, he would look at their face, breasts, makeup, nails, shoes, then casually sweep them over once, and look them in the eyes. Make a snarky comment, and maybe they would consider you well enough to let you leave the back ledge of the ambulance. It didn’t usually work, but it was always worth a try. A hunter has no business being taken care of and issuing statements to the police. The only saving grace was that they weren’t actually on a hunt, so there was no weird shit that they could potentially tie them too.

            Men were different. Face, ass, shoulders, look them over once, ass again, but eye contact meant confrontation. Snarky comments would make them all the more happy to let you sit your ass there all night.

            So Dean made two mistakes.

            First, he looked right in the eye of the dark haired man, despite the fact that there was a flashlight being shone into his retinas, to see a bright blue. The type of blue that people write sappy poems about.

            “You showing me the light, Angel? Like something you see and want to take me back to those pearly white gates?”

            Slightly startled at the light slur in his voice, he was determined to keep looking the EMT in the eye, only blinking when the smaller man narrowed his eyes. “Why would I like seeing a man with a severe concussion?” the man asked, his voice much rougher than Dean had remembered from only a few moments ago when the man was asking him questions.

            “And how do you know that I have that?” His attempted smirk came out much feebler than he had anticipated, and he didn’t realize how much his head hurt.

            “Other than the fact that I have been doing this for seven years? You using that same pickup line three times in an hour might have helped me along.” If Dean hadn’t been focused on his heart beating in his head, he might have seen the budding smirk on the EMT.

            “Where is Harding?” Dean asked suddenly. Pieces of the night started to leak through the flickering haze and clear in his head.

            Blink. The blue and red flashes a few yards off cast strange shadows on the face of the EMT in front of him. Blink. Twisted pieces of silver, black, red, and blue metal were off in the distance, various uniforms walking up to, and then back away from the wreck. Blink. They were driving down the interstate. Blink. A car came into the driver’s seat. Blink. Blink.

            “Hey!” The EMT yelled, bright white filling his head again, always finding its way to his brain through the fissures in the haze…

            Dean could feel the pressure on his neck and head, internal and external; something was holding him in place. Hands were on him, machines screaming somewhere around him.

            “Stay with me, okay? What’s your name? You wouldn’t tell me earlier.” The dark-haired man was looking at his eyes now, or at least somewhere in that vicinity.

            “Tell me yours first,” He sounded like he was making his dying wish….

            “Castiel.”

            “Cas-“

* * *

 

             Blink. White. Bright. Smelled too much like his house when he was younger. When Dad would leave for days at a time and Mom would just scrub the house down top to bottom. Sometimes, Dean would help, others, he would just sit with her, or go upstairs and stop Sammy from crying…

            “Dean?”

            His eyes flew right open. “Sammy?” He turned his head wildly, looking for where the voice had come from… Bad idea…

            Sam was to his left, face red with tears and distraught. Though he  looked as if  he was about to laugh as he gently helped Dean rest his head back on the bed.

            “Good job, only my brother would get in a seven car pileup on the way to get a beer after a hunt.” Hunt? He didn’t remember a hunt… “Lucky you, Harding refused to let you drive. That car would have slammed into you.”

            “Not lucky for Harding,” Dean exhaled and let his head sink further into the pillow.

            “I’m not worried about Harding right now, your brain isn’t bleeding, but they are going to keep you for the next couple days to make sure nothing else happens. You broke your head as much as possible without actually needing surgery.”

            “Well, I guess I’m a walking rabbit’s foot. Bringing us all the good luck.” He kept his eyes close, trying to remember, but nothing came back. At least the fog wasn’t as thick.

            “Do you remember anything all?” Sam whispered, sympathetic.

            “No.” He lied, lifting his head a little.  “Was someone else in here?”

            “Not anyone other than a doctor or nurse, why? You expecting a date already?”

            He laughed roughly, “Naw, don’t worry about it. My head’s a little jumbled.”

            “You aren’t telling me anything I didn’t already know,” a wide grin spread across his brother’s face. Normally, he would have smacked it off, but that grin was better than the red, puffy eyes, so Dean would take it.

            “How long was I out, anyway?” He asked, eyes still closed, head burrowing into the pillow behind him.

            “On and off, this time you might actually remember. It’s about 6 am…”

* * *

         

             When his eyes opened again, it was much brighter than it had been. Things weren’t quite as sharp as they had been either; the throbbing in his head was diminished.

He looked around for Sam’s mangy excuse for a head, to ask what the hell he had been given, but instead he was met with two blue, piercing eyes.

            “Hello, Dean.”

            Blink. “Hey, you are… Cas?” He was struggling to remember where this man came from, but he knew he was familiar.

            “Castiel,” he said in a rough voice, eyes slightly narrowed as he looked over at the beeping machines connected to the man in the bed.

            “Close enough.” Cas walked up and looked at the chart at the end of his bed, head tilted slightly as he took in the chicken scratch on the page. “Don’t like something you see, Angel?” The blue eyes flicked up to meet his own.

            “Your brother went to go get lunch, I promised him I would get him if you woke up.” Dean wasn’t so sure why it bothered him as the man stood up quickly to leave, but it was a strong enough feeling for him to let out a small grunt.

            The stranger looked back at him curiously, eyes glancing back over to the monitors as it to make sure the small noise wasn’t out of pain. “Stay. Let the kid rest a little and eat. As big as he is, God knows he needs it.”

            Cas didn’t say anything as he went over and sat down uncomfortably on the chair on the far side of the bed. Dean managed to push himself up to sit in a relatively respectable position; He wasn’t just going to lay there while he talked to some random stranger.

            The man watched him, silently, as Dean fidgeted to get comfortable in the sterilized sheets. When he did, he looked the man straight in the eye. “You are the EMT who sent me here?” He inquired.

            “Yes,” He didn’t even blink. “As you are the man who passed out and proceeded to puke on my shoes.”

            “Oh, sorry.”

            “I’ve seen worse. I was much more worried about the possible bleeding into your brain to be all too miffed about it.”

            Dean smirked. “I’ve had worse.”

            Cas squinted and tiled his head, as if trying to read his mind. It was just a little creepy. “I believe you. I saw your X-rays. You have multiple healed injuries.”

            “Just proves I am a survivor, doesn’t it?”

            “Or that you are stupid.”

            Dean pursed his lips and looked up at the ceiling, then back into blue eyes. “Why are you even here?”

            The man looked down at the white floor, “I am not sure,” he murmured to the tiles, “I wanted to see how you were doing.” Dean watched the man sneak a glance back to the monitors, then return his gaze to the floor.

            “And how am I doing?” He asked quietly, relieved to see Cas flick his eyes back up to his own.

            “It looks as if you will be okay,” the man just couldn’t hide the ghost of a smile as he looked back down at the floor.

            “You are pretty okay looking yourself.” Blue eyes rushed back up at him, squinting slightly, mouth open as if he was going to say something…

            “Good morning, sleeping beauty. Brought you a burger, extra heart attack as a side, just how you like it.” Sam came in, his hair just missing the doorframe as he plopped the tinfoil package down on his older brother’s lap.

            “Sorry. He had just woken up. I will leave you two to yourselves.” Cas looked nervous, and glanced back at Dean one last time.

            “It’s no problem.” Sam laughed, “I can’t thank you enough for dealing with my brother and getting him to actually get treated.”

            “Of course,” the dark-haired man nodded.

            Dean watched him as he left the room quickly, wondering again what the doctors had given him, and wondering if he was high enough to excuse his comment. Regardless of dosage, Cas really was pretty damn okay.


	2. Guess That Is Life

            As the days went by, the throbbing in his head and neck and the rest of his body slowly began to subside. Sam would sit by his bed, and look up various things, get him actual food, and just sit with his older brother and talk for hours. At night, he would flood over the tiny armchair in the small room and bob his head just slightly as he snored.

            This left Dean a lot of time to lie in bed and think. He tried not to think about the smell of the room, but thought of the long nights when he would hear his mother’s muffled sobs instead of his brother’s monstrous snores. He tried to avoid thinking of his dad, of demons and fires and Sam’s freaky powers.

            Honestly, he would have left the moment he got to the stupid little room if not for Sam. He was calm, laughing, and relaxed. He knew that for the first time Dean was getting some actual help. Sam wouldn’t be playing mother goose for the next few weeks worrying about his older brother if he agreed to a couple nights here, and he wasn’t chasing some monster, wasn’t spending sleepless nights researching griffins or werewolves. Dean had gotten hurt in a normal car accident, people got into those every day. It was almost as if they were normal for a couple days, and he knew Sam needed a little time to be normal.

            He also tried not to think about the emergency responder that had come to the hospital just to check on him. He tried not to think of the hint of scruff around his jaw. He tried not to think of wide blue eyes and navy uniform that seemed just a little too tight to be in code…

            Most of all he tried not to think that he was leaving in just under three hours and Cas hadn’t come back since he had left that first day.

            Dean leaned back deeper into the overly fluffed pillows. The room was a pale orange as the rising sun leaked onto the bare walls from behind half-closed curtains. He cleared his mind by watching the pinks and yellows appear and dissipate on their surface and match his breath to his younger brother’s snores.

            At some point he woke up to the soft footsteps of a pretty nurse. He wasn’t awake enough to give her the usual look over, but he did notice the dark navy of her scrubs. “Glad to see you awake, Mr. Evans.” Her soft blonde curls matched her voice. “Are you excited to be leaving today?” She gave him probably her nicest smile as she opened the curtains, at last dispelling the dulled sunrise on his wall.

            “And leave you here all alone, sweetheart? I might just stay another week.” Dean sat up in the bed quicker than he had in the last two days and he gasped slightly at the rush. Instantly, he felt small, cool hands on him.

            “Mr. Evans?” She worried. He looked past her to see Sam; eyes wide open, and tense in his seat, looking ready to jump up if the need arose.

            He put on his best smile, “Oh, I’m fine, blood just rushing to the wrong part of my body, babe.” Her light voice giggled as he winked. He saw Sam close his eyes, sitting back in his seat. His smiled lightened as he looked from his baby brother to the girl’s bright eyes now just inches from his face.

            Dean froze for the smallest fraction of a second, a second that would have gotten him killed if he was hunting, at the sight. Bright blue eyes met Dean’s green. If not for the specks of brown around the iris, they would be sappy poem ready…

            As Dean moved back slowly, the nurse cautiously did the same. “So Bones, am I ready to spring this joint?” She pursed her lips, trying to catch the reference.

            “Um,” She still had her hamster wheel stuck on ‘Bones’, “Your attending doctor needs to sign off. He should be in within an hour.”

            “Great!” He could feel his eyes tighten.

            “You look good, so I guess I won’t be seeing you,” even her curls looked dejected.

            “Guess that’s life isn’t it?” 

            She gave a quick, half-hearted smile as she left the room.

            “’Guess that’s life?’” Sam jumped up. “Dean, you just let a very attractive and very into you nurse walk out of this room.” Dean glared, not sure why exactly he was getting the Sam Winchester bitchface this early in the morning. 

“Aren’t we leaving? You get a few days of playing mother hen and we get to get the hell out of here and you not worry about me for the next few weeks?” Dean glared as Sam towered over him. He just wanted to leave and get some bacon.

“We might not be leaving yet,” Sam hesitated at Dean’s glare. “I don’t think Harding had finished the case.”

“What do you mean he hadn’t finished? We heard about the case, came to see what we could do, and Harding was here and said it was done. Harding was a seasoned veteran, he wasn’t the type to just leave a job half-assed,” the monitors Dean was hooked up to were screaming as his heart rate increased.

“I know, Dean. But get this, the guy that started the pile up you were in? He had an abrupt aneurysm, just like the first cases.” At this point nurses and doctors were coming into the room to check the monitors.

“Mr. Evans…?”

“Can I just get the fuck out of here?

 

* * *

 

It was ten by the time he was allowed to sit in the Impala and head back to the hotel that Sam had gotten for them sometime in the days prior. As they flew down the road, fingers flexed around the solid steering wheel of his baby, re-learning all her groves like a man did with his significant other after coming home from war. Sam looked pointedly out of the window.

“You are ridiculous,” he finally said, exasperated as he watched Dean fondle the dashboard.

“I’m a lover, Sammy,” Dean smirked as he glanced over to his little brother.

“You are an idiot,” Sam sighed.

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

There was that little boy Sammy smile hiding on his lips.

“So, what is with this Egyptian god thing?” Dean asked after a few minutes of listening to the purr of his baby’s engine.

“Her name is Sekhmet, goddess of destruction, who can cure and cause plagues. All the fun things.” Sam sat there flipping through his pages of notes.

“Awesome,” Dean sighed. “Any way to kill her?”

“It says here that she can’t die, but that she was defeated once by pouring 7,000 jugs of beer stained red, and getting her to drink thinking that it was blood. She fell asleep for days, and upon awaking, her blood thirst was quenched.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’ll find something else,” Sam said quickly, pulling out his phone.

“Yeah, you do that, Sammy. Although, I just might enjoy swimming in a pool of beer.”

“Is that a metaphor?” Sam inquired, half listening for an answer.

“Sure.”

“We might need to pull out the CDC ID’s,” Sam thought, trying to picture them in his head. But they don’t say Evans, and we already have your name here.”

“My FBI one says Evans.”

“But mine doesn’t and at the hospital I said we were brothers,” Sam pursed his lips.

“Well, Sammy. I guess that it’s time for you to become a progressive young man and take your wife’s name,” Dean looked over, a huge, smug smile spreading across his face.

“I hate you.”

“Naw. No you don’t.”

“I would hit you, but I don’t think they would appreciate you back at the hospital for another accident.”

Dean just laughed as they pulled into the shitty motel that Sam had found.

 

* * *

 

Most of their afternoon was spent sitting in their small, Hawaiian floral motel room. Despite the faded orange and blues, bugs, and lack of hot water, Dean was still more comfortable here than at the hospital room. Drinking a beer with his feet up on the small table in the kitchenette, he casually looked through his phone for information on the Egyptian God and occasionally, just as casually, changing tabs to the _Busty Asian Beauties_ website.

Meanwhile, Sam was alternating between studiously scrawling notes onto the notebook on his lap and looking up at his laptop.

Dean blithely looked up from a particularly busty beauty to Sam as he heard the sound of plastic colliding as a laptop slammed shut. “Hmmm?”

“I’m going to the library.”

“You don’t have to get all huffy about it, Hermione.”

“Very funny. I just want this job done,” Sam scoffed as he grabbed the keys to the Impala. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Bring me a burger on the way home!” Dean yelled as Sam walked out the door.

As he heard the click of the lock, Dean tossed the phone down and wandered over to the other side of the room where two blue and orange beds were, and threw himself down on the farthest one. He let his head sink deep into the pillow; luckily this one didn’t smell of the piss that many others he had laid his head on had. Hopefully, he might be able to get some sleep since that hospital bed had done nothing for him except create a spot in his back that no matter how much he moved or stretched he could not seem to pop.

Dean had almost lost consciousness as he heard a knock on the door. “Damnit, Sam,” he groaned as he got up to get it. He was about to yell as he opened the door, but instead of his overgrown baby brother, Dean’s eyes met blue ones. The type of blue that people write songs about. Blue eyes and dark, messy hair, and an increased amount of stubble.

“Hello, Dean.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all those who have already begun reading! This is the last expository chapter, and chapters will become longer and more involved as the story progresses. Also, when formatting this, bad things kept happening, so if I couldn't get them all fixed, sorry.


	3. Virgins on a Beach

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean just blinked. With the roughness of the stranger's voice, Dean might have guessed he was a chain smoker if he didn’t know the man’s profession, and that he smelled vanilla and mint off the man instead of ash and tar. The low sun was right behind his head, creating a halo around his dark, messy hair. The only thing brighter than the sun was his eyes, which were half obscured as he was squinting with his head slightly tilted to the right. In contrast to the light, he had deep bags under his eyes, suggesting he hadn’t slept much in the past days. Dean’s lips parted slightly as he looked back into the blue, the man’s eyes now wider with a grim smile.

“I’ve had a couple long shifts,” Cas said as he followed Dean’s line of vision. “May I come in?”

“Uh, yeah.” Dean moved out of the doorway and into the room, pausing for a moment before he decided to sit at the small kitchen table. He watched as Cas carefully stepped inside and hesitated next to the table, looking as if he didn’t know what he was to do next. “Are you going to shut the door?” Dean was getting slowly annoyed at the man. Cas squinted his eyes again as he looked back questioningly at the door.

“Oh, yes.” He said as he carefully turned the handle and shut the door, making the least amount of noise possible. Dean just looked at him, dumbfounded as he returned back to hovering over the table, again, as if unsure of how to proceed.

“Are you going to sit?” Dean could hear some exasperation in his own voice. Cas carefully sat down. Dean took a moment to just stare at the man at the table. “Are you okay?”

“Sorry, I’m not really sure how to do this,” he answered as he looked around the room.

“Do what?”

“Talk to people.” At this, Cas locked his eyes onto Dean’s.

“Jesus, aren’t you an EMT? Doesn’t that involve talking to people?”

“No.”

“No? No what?” Cas still hadn’t taken his eyes off Dean. Uncomfortable, Dean looked away and around the room, watching the room get darker and darker as the autumn sun set. He would need to turn the light room on eventually. He finally looked back at Cas who seemed to be waiting for his gaze to return before he answered the question. The increasing amount of shadows made the bags under his eyes darker and darker, and casted his image on the opposite wall.

“I’m a paramedic.”

“Okay, that still doesn’t answer my question.” Dean was just getting increasingly frustrated.

“You asked if I was an EMT. I was specifying that I am a paramedic.”

“Doesn’t being a paramedic or whatever still involve talking to people?” Was this guy for real?

“That was different. I work well under pressure. Asking questions, analyzing medical needs, statistics, data. It makes sense. People react to trauma in numerous ways, but once you figure out their path, they are predictable.”

“Was I predictable?” He asked sarcastically as he looked down at the tight jeans that the man across from him was wearing. They were light, faded, and worn. However, the grey T-shirt he was wearing looked new, and not quite as tight as his pants, yet fitted to his obviously athletic body.

“Not predictable, but practiced,” Cas, again, silently followed his gaze. “I started running a little more than a year ago. And swimming. I haven’t had the opportunity to buy many new clothes. I didn’t realize I was gaining muscle until a co-worker pointed out that my uniform was distracting a few women at a scene.”

Slightly unprepared for the amount of words Cas had just strung together, unprompted, Dean quickly got up to flick the little light switch on, dispelling the increasing amount of shadows in the room fashioned by the low sun. The second Cas on the wall had vanished, or at least left his view.

Dean turned around to see Cas standing again, still watching him. Seeing Dean’s face, he quickly sat back down. “What do you mean, practiced?” He asked, cautiously now, sitting back down across from the strange man that he had for some reason let into the room.

“Obviously you had been in many accidents, whether car accidents or not I don’t know. You took your injuries well, ignoring symptoms that most people would have been crying over. You are strong. You are sarcastic and cynical and flirty because you know most people will just let you go at that point.  You are sure of yourself and yet not at all sure of yourself at the same time. You might be military, but you don’t have the discipline or respect for authority. I am just not sure about you, Dean Evans.” Blue eyes were trying to find some window to his soul, but he wasn’t having that today.

“I’m FBI, on a case.” He retorted.

“I don’t believe you,” Cas said quietly.

“Here,” he said as the handed his badge to the man with a smug look, “believe me now?”

Cas turned it over in his hands, feeling every atom with his fingers. Dean supposed those fingers had to be thorough, after dealing with so many intricate medical procedures. “I suppose,” he handed it back carefully. “And what are you investigating?”

“A string of mysterious aneurysms, like the one that caused the car accident I was in.”

Cas looked at the freckled man intently, his eyes squinting up again. “What does the FBI want with a string of aneurysms? How could that be a crime?”

Dean gave a harsh laugh, “I don’t know, I’m not really going to question the big man upstairs though, if you know what I mean.”

The other man hesitated and Dean watched his lips part as if he was going to say something, but before he could let the words leave his tongue, Sam rushed into the small room, flooding it with the florescent lights from the streetlights outside. Cas looked behind him only slightly unnerved by the sudden entrance while Dean almost fell out of his seat.

Sam stopped and looked at Cas curiously.

“Are you his partner?” Cas asked Sam levelly.

“His what?”

“His partner, or are you actually brothers? Or both?”

“What? No! We don’t swing that way!” Dean yelled out.

Sam just grinned as Cas’s lips popped into a little ‘oh’ of surprise before settling into a grin of his own. Even with only moving his mouth slightly, you could see the slight smile at the corners of his eyes.

“FBI partners, Dean.” Cas’s smile got a fraction larger.

“Yeah, we are,” Sam interjected, still smug and holding out his badge for Cas to see.

“And you have different last names?” Cas’s eyes squinted as he handed back the card.

“Sammy here is ladies’ man; Said he would take his wife’s name and he somehow ended up with a hot chick.”

“Oh, congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“I was just telling Cas here about our investigation.”

“Were you?” Sam said, looking at Cas who at this point had turned his eyes back to Dean. “So, do you know anything strange about them? Any connections or other injuries to the body?”

“No,” said Cas simply, still looking at Dean. His eyes were careful to keep away from the direct line of blue from the stranger.

“Any idea how many there have been?” Sam probed, trying to catch his full attention. Dean watched subtly as Cas scrunched his eyes again as he tried to think numbers over in his head. “Cas?” Sam asked again after a minute.

“I’m not exactly sure,” he breathed slowly as he turned back to Sam. “I have myself only responded to a couple, but from colleagues I know of over twenty possible ones. There may be more, but that is all I know of personally.”

“Awesome, that is a lot of help. Anything else you can think of?”

“Not presently” he said quietly, turning back to Dean. “I should be leaving, you two seem like you have much to do,” He moved to get up.

Dean copied him in the motion, “I’ll walk you to your car,” he said quickly, eyes flicking over to Sam who held a strange expression on his face that he couldn’t determine.

“Oh, I didn’t drive. I walked.” Cas said dispassionately, moving for the door.

“What do you mean you walked?”

“I mean that I left my house this morning, walked to work, and then walked to your front door.” Dean just stared at him as if all the words were foreign to him.

After a moment, he broke his temporary shock, “Then let me drive you home, it’s almost dark.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark.” Cas said quietly.

“Well, you are damn well not walking home in it. Go get in the Impala.” Cas stared at him blankly, which Dean noticed was about eighty six percent of his expressions, but walked out the door and headed in the direction of the car.

“He is like a damn toddler,” Dean muttered as he pulled his keys out of the pocket of the leather jacket he had never taken off. “I’ll be right back, Sam.” He looked over at his younger brother to see a small smirk on his face. “What is that look for?” Sam just smiled.

“Bitch,” He called out as he walked through the doorway.

“Jerk” he heard Sam call back as he shut the door behind him.

Dean blinked as the setting sun temporarily blinded his vision. The sky was an impossible mess of orange and pink and yellow. The stereotypical sunset that you find over a painting of a beach. The type of sunset that virgins imagine in the background as they lose it on the beach.

As he reached the car, the sun finally fell below the horizon dispelling the imagery. With one last blink, he could see clearly enough to see Cas staring at the door handle as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Sighing, Dean opened the driver’s door and sat in the car, waiting for the other man to figure it out. “Where the fuck do you come from,” Dean muttered to himself as Cas shot him one last puppy dog look before finally reaching out and opening the door.

“I come from my Mother, and my Father.” He said blankly.

“Don’t we all?” Dean asked rhetorically and he started his baby’s engine. “How did you know where I was staying, anyway?”

“I heard Sam telling a nurse so that they knew where you were in case there were complications.” Dean just groaned. Sam should know better than giving out their address. They would have to change hotels.

“What?” Cas inquired.

Dean ignored him, looking over at the strange man. “And you just wrote down the address of a random guy, and then just strolled down the highway to his hotel room?”

“I memorized it.”

“What?”

“I memorized the address. I have a very good memory.” Dean just stared at him.

“What?” Cas asked, mimicking the tone Dean had just taken.

After a moment of continued starting, Dean just broke out into laughter. The guy had just tried to be funny, and while on most people it would be stupid, the mockery on Cas’s lips was just too damn hilarious.

A smile broke out on dark haired man’s face. His lips parted to reveal perfect, straight, white teeth that were only outshined by the corner of Cas’s mouth that smiled just a little higher than the other.

“You know, you are a weird dude, Cas.” Dean turned back to the road, a smile of his own now displayed across his lips.

“So I’ve been told.” He said seriously, smile gone.

“Aww, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Everyone is a little messed up, a little bit of a freak.” Dean’s smile grew, and looked over to see Cas staring at him intently.

“And you? Are you a freak too?”

His smile fell as he looked back at the road flying beneath him. “I’m a lot of things, Cas.”

The car was silent for a few minutes aside from the purr of the engine until Dean saw a small, sad smile cross Cas’s face. “Aren’t we all?” He asked quietly, not wanting to offend Dean again.

“Am I even going the right way?” Dean asked after another moment, his words dispelling the former tension.

“Uh, no.” Cas said cautiously, looking out the window. You missed the turn about eight miles ago.

“Damnit,” Dean muttered under his breath, and sighed as he heard a small apology from the passenger’s seat. “It’s fine, Cas, just tell me where I need to go.”

“Turn around when you can and go straight back three exits.” Dean nodded and began to turn around in the middle of the road until Cas frantically grabbed the steering wheel, turning the car straight again.

“Jesus, Cas! What the fuck was that?”

“You can’t turn around in the middle of the road. It’s illegal,” Cas said, eyes wide and face flushed. How could eyes be so wide and blue and innocent with a voice so deep? Nothing about this man made sense.

“I’m a damn agent, I know what's illegal,” He said harshly, moving to turn around again on the empty road.

“I don’t want you to get into another accident.” His wide eyes just stared into his soul.

“Okay, Cas,” he said softly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, they found their way to the small neighborhood where Cas lived, a mixture of condos and duplexes and townhouses. He pulled up in the parking space he was directed, next to a little silver Volvo, he just gave Cas a mocking look of disappointment. “Its a very safe car,” he replied, unapologetic.

Dean just scoffed, but still smiled at the other man. There was an awkward pause as Dean waited for his passenger to get out of the car. Cas looked at him, expectantly.

“What?” Dean asked, confused.

“Would you like to come in?” Cas asked, quietly, staring at Dean with wide eyes.

“In your house?”

“No, in my treehouse.” He looked at the passenger curiously; it was strange to hear sarcasm so easily flow off his lips, especially so dry.

He took a moment to consider the offer.“Do you have beer?” he asked with a smile.

“Only light.” Cas said, returning the smile, with a hint of something else at the corner of his squinting blue eyes.

“I guess that will do,” Dean replied with a laugh, throwing open the door. He watched as whatever other expression was buried with his face was replaced by a full smile. Cas followed his driver’s motion and threw open the door, almost hitting his car, which made Dean just laugh harder as he slid easily out of the car.

The slightly taller man was able to get to the other side of the car quick enough to watch Cas struggle his way awkwardly out of the car. At this, Dean doubled over with laughter, and came up with a huge grin on his face to squinting blue eyes inches away from his own green. His face was illuminated by the streetlight above them, and Dean could watch his eyes dilate and dissipate depending on which way he moved his head, controlling the amount of light that was blocked by his shadow.  

“Are we going to go inside?” Dean asked, watching the corner of his lips carefully.

“Oh,” he paused, “yeah, of course.” He hesitated, almost as if he was waiting for Dean to lead him, but quickly realized that Dean would have no idea where he lived. Cas moved past Dean, and walked towards the tall building.  

Dean followed him silently, laughing to himself as Cas would occasionally look back quickly as if to see if Dean was still there. At the door of his townhouse, he fumbled for his keys, only to drop them in the rose bushes that lined the bottom of his window. He stuck his hand into the thorny bushes, pulling it out with keys in hand and little red slices in his skin. The red marks got bigger as he put the key into the door and unlocked it, pushing open the grey and walking into the blackness of his house. Dean felt up the wall to find the little light switch, and the room exploded with light. Cas flipped around fast enough for Dean to watch the blue of his iris engulf the small black pupil.

“Sorry,” Dean smiled.

After a moment, Cas relaxed and returned the smile. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to sit.” He motioned up the few stairs into the room temporarily concealed by a wall. Cas kicked off his shoes on a light grey mat and turned to leave, and Dean imitated the motion and followed him up the miniature foray and turned into what he assumed to be the living room.

For what he could see, the entire house was white, light grey, and light blue. High, white walls extended the entire height of the house, and he watched as Cas emerged from the stairs and walked along the balcony to what seemed to be an open kitchen on the second floor. White carpet, grey furniture, and blue accents covered the man’s home. Pristine and neat, the only thing that fell out of the color pallet was the numerous books, the only things in the house that looked as if they had ever actually been used, in white book shelves that lined the back wall of the living room, and dining room straight out from the stairs.

“It doesn’t make much sense for the kitchen and dining room to be on separate floors, but I don’t usually have company, so it is irrelevant.”

Dean was startled by the voice, and looked around a moment before looking up to see Cas standing in the hallways upstairs, the light above him illuminating his face, two beers in his hand. He watched Cas disappear down the steps, and return through an archway to his left, holding out the bottle with a hand now wrapped in a white bandage. “You really can sit,” he insisted, carefully sitting on the suede looking grey couch, opening his beer and throwing the top onto the glass coffee table. Dean followed in suit, looking at the couch and hesitating afraid that he might stain the sterile surface in someway. However, feeling Cas’s eyes staring at him, he sat down and quickly opened the bottle and took a drink, avoiding blue eyes.

Instead, he continued his examination of the room around him. The books on the shelves were primarily old, worn, religious texts, and modern medical journals and textbooks. Amidst these were books with titles in languages he couldn’t read, historical anthologies, and literary collections. There were a lack of photos on the walls, no allusion to a family, but instead he noticed a large, wrought iron, decorative cross behind him the dining room. There was a fireplace, which appeared to be gas, at the end of the L shaped couch, and across the room was a large, flatscreen television mounted on the wall.

“You a football fan?” Dean asked, motioning his head in the direction of the screen.

“No,” he replied, following Dean’s gesture. “A coworker told me it was strange to not have one, so I purchased one. I don’t watch much.” Cas looked back at Dean, searching his eyes for something.Perhaps a confirmation that it was acceptable to have such a thing in his home.

“Do you watch anything?”

“The news, C-span. They also have these screens of things like fish and waterfalls that have relaxing music that I will occasionally put on as I read. Again, he looked to Dean for some feedback.

Dean could think of nothing other than Cas reading a serious medical journal with some violins in the background as nemo floated across the screen and just laughed. Cas’s face became serious. “Is that strange?”

“Out of all the things you do, its not the strangest,” he continued laughing as he took another sip of beer. Cas looked down at his bottle as he considered this.

“Sorry.” He said quietly.

“Don’t be sorry,” Dean laughed, slapping Cas on the back lightly, causing him to spill a tiny bit of beer onto his jeans.

“How is your hand, by the way?” Dean asked as he got up and looked around for the remote to the television, although Cas might have just not bought one.

“It’s fine, I just cleaned it. The bandage makes it look a lot worse than it was. There was just no point in putting multiple little ones on.” His eyes followed Dean around the room. “What are you looking for?”

“The remote,” Dean said amidst his search.

“Oh.”

“Oh, what?” Dean paused and turned back around.

“Oh, you are looking for the remote,” Cas’s eyes were wide with confusion.

“Do you have one?” He asked as he resumed looking in a white basket next to the fireplace.

“Yes.”

Dean turned back to Cas, jumping slightly as he met bright blue eyes. Despite being slightly shorter, the man’s stature made Dean step an insignificant step back in intimidation.

“Would you like me to get it for you?” He asked, his voice slipping deeper in his confusion, probably wondering why this man that had puked on his shoes in the days previous was now going through his things.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Why?” Cas’s eyes squinted, and again he titled his head just slightly to the left, his lips parting slightly as in preparation…

“I thought we could watch a movie. I guess you wouldn’t have seen many. A classic? I dunno, I don’t make many new friends…” He stopped as he caught his slip in diction. He didn’t make friends. Cas wasn’t his friend. Friends died. Friends left.

For all that Cas was staring at him, he didn’t realize Dean’s sudden stop. Cas himself, was probably caught on the word friend. Dean guessed he didn’t have much, if any.

“Okay, I can get it,” and he disappeared up the stairs again and into one of the doors parallel to the railing.

Dean sat back on the couch and closed his eyes, trying to de-familiarize himself with the room. After a few minutes, he smelled vanilla and mint as Cas sat down next to him, only just too close, and felt the remote fall into his lap.

He opened his eyes to see two more beers sitting on the glass table in front of him, and looked up at Cas.

“I figured that if we were going to watch a movie, that you would need more than one to hold you over.”

“Thanks,” he smiled as he flipped the television on. “Am I allowed to order a movie? It’s a great one.”

Cas smiled and looked down, the right corner of his mouth creeping up just slightly higher than the other.

They both settled in as Dean found The Great Escape and turned it on, going through all three beers over the course of the movie. Cas seemed mesmerized by it, and sat up straight on the edge of the couch. Occasionally, Dean would look over to briefly watch the light of the screen flicker across Cas’s face, his eyes wide as if trying to absorb all he could from the screen.

Eventually, the movie ended and Cas pleaded for another, and Dean threw on the first Star Trek movie. He settled back comfortably, and fell in and out of sleep, eventually falling into sleep watching the lights play games with the dark bags under Cas’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

At some point, Dean woke up in warm, strong arms. His eyes opened lazily to grey cotton. “What-” he started before a low voice laugh softly. He looked out to see the television still displaying images of Spock and Kirk below him, and he could see the entire living room from the upstairs balcony.

“I’m not a child,” his anger lost in his sleepy voice.

“And I’m not your mother,” the voice laughed again.

“No, you are an angel.”

“And you are tired.”

The warm arms disappeared, replaced by soft sheets, and the voice hushed him to sleep again.

 

* * *

 

Dean woke up in dark blue sheets, to white walls tinted orange by the rising sun through the window to his left. He blinked, unsure of how he got there, or even where ‘there’ was.

He walked out of the small room to see the Cas’s white house completely tye-dyed by the rising sun by the huge windows across from him that he hadn’t noticed earlier. Above the living room, he peered down and noticed the mess of beer bottles he had left had already been cleaned up.

As he was about to walk down the stairs, he noticed another door open, and saw a large room, which he assumed to belong to Cas, and a small bump in grey sheets of a large bed.

Quietly, he continued down the stairs, and looked around the house to find a pen and paper to write his number down. He eventually located the objects in a large office off of the dining room, the only room which looked to be actually lived in, with books and pens and paper scattered across a large L shaped desk and the floor. He quickly wrote his number and name on the pad, and left it on the coffee table, grabbed his shoes, and closed the door to the house as silently as he could managed before he slipped into the Impala and drove back to the motel.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took so long. Marching Band and Midterms just ended, but this is at least twice as long, so I don't feel so bad.


	4. Burger King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Kwanza! I meant to get this out for Christmas, but that didn't happen.

It wasn’t until he reached the door of the motel and fumbled with the keys that he realized that he had left Sam alone without the Impala and no idea of where he was. The peeling paint seemed to shed an entire coat before Dean was able to unlock the door and push it open, expecting Sam to flip out on him for disappearing.

Instead, what he met was a dark room that he had temporarily filled with light just enough to see his overgrown brother flooding over the bed, snoring, without a care in the world.

Dean quietly closed the door behind him kicking off his shoes, and started stripping as he went towards the bathroom door, leaving his clothes discarded on his bed. He heard a particularly loud snort from Sam, and watched him roll over. He rushed into the bathroom so as not to wake his sleeping brother.  The orange and blue tiles were cold on his bare feet, and he quickly turned the shower on as hot as it would get.

Once it warmed up enough to start fogging the glass, he let out a hiss as he stepped under the stream of water. While the water burned the skin on his back, it loosened the muscles that were so often threatening to snap with tension.

He alternated between working the shampoo into his hair and scalp and just standing under the water, closing his eyes and letting the shower burn into all of his body. He hoped it would wash away everything; the vampires, the monsters, images of waking up to white walls…

Eventually, the water began to cool, no longer allowing him to feel its full effects in his muscles and sinews, and he quickly finished washing his body and stepped out of the water.

From the other room, he heard Sam’s voice through the door, and wrapped himself in a towel, quietly walking into the main room.

Dean came in just in time to see Sam flip his phone shut. “Who was that?” He inquired, going over to his suitcase and fishing out some jeans.

Sam just laughed, “Taking a post-coital shower?”

“What? No!” Dean exclaimed, “Hey, I don’t swing that way, you know that. We just drank a few beers and watched a couple movies. The guy obviously didn’t have much experience in friends, so I just hung out with him and fell asleep on the couch.” At least he thought it had been the couch, but that didn’t account much for where he had ended up.

“Yeah okay,” Sam smirked.

“Damnit, I’m serious.” Dean glared dangerously. Sam just laughed.

“Who was on the phone?” He asked again, his voice still angry as he slipped on his leather jacket.

“Get out your dress clothes, we have another scene.” He said, still a small smile on his face.

Dean just groaned as he began to take the clothes he just put on off again in exchange for stingy dress clothes. Sam just laughed harder as he made his way into the bathroom. “Bitch!” He called through the door.

“Jerk!” He heard, despite the appearance of the sound of water coming from the bathroom.

“Damnit, Dean!” He heard Sam yell after a minute or so. “How long were you in here?”

“Just long enough to take all the hot water for myself,” Dean laughed as he pulled his new pants on.

“Fuck.” He heard from the other side.

 

* * *

 

 

The crime scene ended up being in the middle of the woods under the shade of large trees, their bark bare until leaves and branches jetted out towards the top.

In the center of a ring of trees was a large tent, with a middle age man’s body lying just outside the entrance.

“What’s the story?” Dean asked the officer.

“Dunno,” he shrugged, “Just got here a little before yourself. We called your partner as soon as we got the call, but we are pretty sure that it is the same story as the others. Male, died of an apparent aneurism.”

“Any sign of a connection to the other victims?” Sam questioned as the three of them walked up to the body.

“Hell if I know, we haven’t even identified him yet. No ID, he was found by a couple hikers early this morning. They are over there if you want to talk to them.” The officer motioned his head over to the ambulance, where a couple was sitting on the back, being attended by a man with messy black hair.

“Stay here, Sam. I’ll talk to the couple.”

“Yeah, okay,” he smirked as the officer walked away, and a very blonde, very pretty coroner made her way to the dead man. “You sure?”

Dean watched her for a moment, and then looked back at Sam. “Shut up.”

As soon as he made his way closer to the flashing lights, he could tell that the man he was approaching was not who he had thought, and very obviously so. The man turned around, and Dean met dark brown eyes.

“Can I talk to them?” Dean asked, looking past him and to the people just beyond him.

“And you are?” The EMT looked him over like he was a piece of meat.

“Dean Evans,” he said, flipping open his badge.

The EMT grabbed the badge and inspected it closely. “Suitable.”

“I would damn well hope so,” He glared, grabbing it back.

“Nice to meet you, Evans, I’m Lane. Careful with the handsome one; that one’s a fainter,” he said with a gleeful wink as he grabbed his bag, and walked around to the front.

He pursed his lips for a moment, and watched the wife attempting to calm her husband. He approached carefully, smiling as amiable as he could.

“Hello, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I am Agent Evans with the FBI, and I just had a couple of quick questions about your finding of the body.” Dean tried to adopt a tone that would rival Sam’s, and he thought he was doing a pretty damn good job at it.

The wife had her arms around her husband’s shoulder, holding him tight. “Yes,” she gave a small smile. “I am Elizabeth Small and this is my partner, Elliot.” Dean could tell she was watching him closely. “We were walking early this morning, just trying to escape the chaos of the city when we came across the body. Elliot fainted, and I called the cops and an ambulance. There really isn’t much to say, sadly. I wish we could be of more help. The man made a small noise, and Elizabeth went back to consoling him.

He waited, giving them a moment before coughing lightly, her pale blue eyes looking back up at him quickly. “Just a couple more questions and I will let you be, Mrs. Small. Did you know the victim at all?”

“No, I have no idea who he is.”

“Did you see anybody else in the woods as you were walking? Anything that looked out of the ordinary?”

“No, nothing.”

“Lion.” The woman quickly looked at her husband.

“Honey, it wasn’t a lion, it was a deer or a fox.”

“Lion.” The man repeated.

“I’m sorry; my significant has had quite a shock.” She said softly, rubbing her hands over her spouse’s back.

“Of course,” Dean said, nodding, and retreating from the couple.

His shoulder hit a tree, and blinked to find himself far on the outskirts of the mess of police flashing lights. While they were primarily protected from the wind by the trees, he could see the shadows that the trees cast sway as it blew above them, allowing for little patches of light to pace across the bare soil and leaves on the ground. It was significantly darker under the canopy than it had been outside the tree line, the shade only adding to the autumn chill that the morning brought with it.

Sam looked over at him, pointing to the ambulance as he followed the body being carted away. Dean nodded, and watched as his brother climbed into the back, just as they closed the doors. Really, they knew what was happening with the body, and there was no point in leaving, but Dean really didn’t care either way. They had no idea where Sekhmet was, and until then, they didn’t have much they could do.

He watched as the scene began to clear, leaving minimal people in the fragile location to get as much evidence as they could. They wouldn’t find anything, and being so close to the city one would think that they had better shit to do. It occurred to him that he had no idea if the police had actually connected or investigated the string of aneurysms, and quickly texted Sam to see if he could find out.  

The crime scene became darker as the sun passed behind clouds making the flashing red and blue of the cars the primary light. Dean closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the rough bark of the tree, listening to the murmurs of the forensic examiners and police. All the ambulances had gone, the couple who had been sitting on the back end probably taken to the hospital so that the fainter could get treatment for shock. Only a couple days ago it had been him on the back of that truck.  

How had he gone from giving an EMT sass to waking up in his house, tucked into covers so well like he hadn't been since his mother had gone? Sam certainly hadn’t taken that kind of care, not that it had been his job in any respect. But Sam had left for a long time, and despite all that had happened in the last year and a half, they were still getting to know each other again.

Still, why did this man have the right to tuck him into bed like a child? God knows how he got him into that bed in the first place. But despite what Sam had thought, it wasn’t like they had done anything. He hadn’t woken up in the same bed after all, but it still left too much doubt in his mind. They weren’t friends. Friends died. Friends left. Harding was just the most recent example.

His phone vibrated in his pocket; a simple “okay” from Sam appeared on his screen before he quickly put it away, and headed out from the small clearing and back to his baby.

 

* * *

 

Dean lived for the road; The long stretches of black pavement, the blur of scenery as he drove. Speed.

Monsters and witches were things he accepted. He grew up with them, learned how to kill them from his Dad, and that was his life. Saving people, hunting things, that was his meaning, but driving his baby down the road was his reward.

He drove aimlessly down the highway until he saw a liquor store, and pulled off to replenish his supply of alcohol. When he came out,  he flipped open his little black phone as he opened the Impala door. He put the beer in the back, and headed back to the morgue to pick up his little brother.

It took him a little longer to get back, unsure of where exactly he had gotten himself, but eventually he found something he recognized, and followed the road back to get his brother.

He pulled into the parking lot, only to see Sam standing outside the glass doors, bitchfacing him as he drove up to him.

“What took you so long?” He glared, “Had to take a quickie with your new boyfriend?”

“Damnit, Sam, he is not my fucking boyfriend.”

“Then where were you?” He asked, the door only just shut as Dean drove off again. Dean just jerked his head to the backseat.

“Well, it will have to wait, we need to go to the library.”

“Yeah, okay, Hermione.” Dean grumbled as he took a sharp left.

“But anyway, the police are trying to connect the deaths, but have no idea how. How do you connect aneurysms?”

“This is why the police are useless.”

“Dean, it’s not their fault that they don’t know what is going on.”

“You are right. They are just stupid.” Dean, looked over at his sighing brother, a smile on his face. “Bitch.”

“Jerk,” Sam laughed.

The library was small and dusty, considering the metropolitan area that they were in. As they walked in, Sam apologized to Dean as he pointed to the pitifully tiny picture book section. This awarded him a smack over the head from the shorter brother.

They sat down at a small table next to the reference and history section, and Dean skimmed the tiny words, his eyes continuously flipping up to watch Sam scrutinize the text, book after book. After a couple hours, and a few pages for Dean, Sam sighed and closed his book.

“We have to get her drunk,” Sam looked at him, seriously.

“What?”

“Sekhmet. We have to get her drunk. There is something else, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

“We are gonna waste a god by holding a keg party?”

Sam sighed, “just to get her sedated, then we kill her, but that part I haven’t worked out just yet.”

“Sammy, the killing part is kind of important.”

“Not if we can’t get her drunk, and it has to be a lot. The last time took barrels and barrels of wine.”

“So, we fill a pool, take a swim?” Dean thought of all the possibilities.

“Sure, whatever. Lets just go,” Sam took the book that Dean had been playing with, and rolled his eyes as he took a look at the page number and carried them back to the shelves.

 

* * *

 

 

The Impala pulled into the small parking lot of the motel to see a small, silver volvo parked across from their room. Dean pulled in, and  to the right of him, through two layers of glass, those blue, smoldering eyes gazed at him. Large and wide, like a high school boy high at his first rave. His heart skipped a beat, as he peered into them, only looking away as the door slammed in the passenger seat, Sam waving over the Impala’s hood.

“Hey, Cas!”

Dean quickly exited the car, and took a step back to see Cas already look at him over the top of his shiny, plastic car. He watched as the dark haired man waved to Sam, but has eyes only for Dean.

“Do you want to come inside?” Sam asks him, sparing his brother the attempt to talk.

“No thank you, Sam. I just would like to talk to Dean alone for a moment.” His eyes go briefly to Sam’s. Dean wanted his stare back, as ominous as it was, as quickly as it was gone.

He almost breathed easier when Cas looked at him, head tilted, eyes squinted. “Can we...sit?” He asked patiently, cautiously, almost as if expecting a no.

“Yeah,” Dean said, sitting back in the Impala, and reaching over to open the passenger door. Sam was gone, and Dean watched his stupidly long hair enter their shitty motel room.

After a few moments, Cas took the hint, and carefully placed himself on the black interior. His hands playing with the handle as he pulled it shut, and then quickly falling into his lap as his eyes fell back on Dean, his lips parted slightly, maintaining eye contact as he pulled off a cleanly kept trenchcoat, and folding it in his lap.

“Did you have a date? Pretty dressed up there, Cas.” Dean’s eyes wandered over his nice dress clothes; clearly, they had been recently bought, as they looked like they fit him perfectly, rather than explicitly exposing his shape, the outfit just showcased it.

“I had… a thing.” He said quietly, voice rough, as if he had been talking more than he had in a while.

“A thing?” Dean scoffed as he sat back in his seat, his eyes looking over the steering wheel of his baby. Beyond the road was a small band of trees, a small cluster of stores and restaurants filled in the space behind them off in the distance. He watched the sun get dangerously low in the sky.

“It was a church council meeting. I am the chair head.”

Dean looked over at him, dumbfounded. “You get up and talk in front of people, at church?”

“Yes. It is close to here. I guess you could say that I was… in the neighborhood.” Dean watched his small attempt at an easy smile, but Dean just continued to stare at him, confused, and watched as Cas’s eyes dropped down to his hands. They kept moving slightly, as if his long fingers were going to make their way up to play with his own tie in the silence, but decided against it, over and over.

“Huh,” Dean said simply, lounging back in his seat, looking at a car speed past them in a mom van. He wanted to apologize for leaving so abruptly, but didn’t want to say the words. ‘I’m sorry’ was so… apologetic.

“You left,” Cas said calmly, his eyes back on Dean.

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “Got a text from Sammy,” he lied simply. “Didn’t mean to abandon you, man. Didn’t want to wake you up either.”  
He looked over, Cas’s eyes seemed lighter, not as big, but easier. Did he blame himself for Dean leaving. “Oh. I understand. Your brother means much to you. You mean much to him as well. He was beyond worried when I met him in the hospital. But he knew you were strong and would be okay. Emotion trumps logic often, even in the smartest of people.”

“Yeah, Sammy can be a girl sometimes.”

“I hardly think you would be better in the situation. Possibly even worse. As I said, he means much to you.”

Dean turned his full attention to Cas; searching his face, his eyes, his hands, the rise and fall of his chest. The movement paused for a fleeting moment, and Dean had almost convinced himself that he had imagined it, before a low breath left the dark haired man’s parted lips, too heavy for a normal breath. Who was this stranger that caught onto him so quickly? Who Dean had puked on his shoes and in return memorized his motel number and visited him in the hospital?

“Everything,” Dean breathed lamely, settling back into his seat. “Now enough with the chick flick moments.”

Cas saw this as a dismissal.

“You should come over again.” He said quietly. “Watch another movie. I can pick up another case of beer. I work tomorrow. But any night can do. I don’t have the night shift for a while.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Okay.”

Dean closed his eyes as the door closed, and he heard footsteps walk around the car. Another door closed, and the silver volvo pulled out from next to him.

His eyes opened to a sky of purple and pink, red staining the bottom of the color spectrum. He watched the sun fall behind an abandoned Burger King.

Cas.

What a fucking weird dude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with this chapter. Not sure why. It won't happen again. Thank you for those who stuck around, and those who are new! I have until chapter 10 planned, so we will see...


	5. Angels and Alcohol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Brief mentions of child abuse, and a strong implication of child rape. 
> 
> Both are towards the beginning of the chapter.

“If you change that tape, Sammy, I swear to God that I will break your overgrown nose.”

“I’m sick of your stupid bands, Dean. Reagan isn’t president anymore!”

“I’m sick of your stupid fucking hair, but I still let you in the car.”

Sam just sighed, flipping through the notes he had taken while again on the phone early this morning. Another body.

“Are we sure that it is Sekhmet?” Sam asked absentmindedly.

“How many fucking Gods can turn into lions, Sam?”

“Probably a lot. But get this, she usually plagues entire towns with disease. Not aneurysms. Diseases. Vomiting, feverish, boils, all of it.” He pursed his lips, grabbing a book from the back about Egyptian Gods. “It just doesn’t make sense. I mean a lot of those things have easy cures now, the bubonic plague just needs a round of antibiotics, but I’m sure she would know of a few things that could just wipe out the town.”

“Damnit, Sam. I’m a hunter, not a doctor. I don’t care what she did a thousand years ago, I care about wasting the bitch.” Sam glared at the older brother. “I’m serious! Does it matter? She is killing people and we need to stop her, hopefully before she gets a case of Throwback Thursday and she decides to infect everyone with locusts.”

“It does matter. We have to kill a God, Dean. We can’t just burn her bones. Don’t you see just a little bit of importance in knowing a bit about her?”

“We know that we need to get her drunk to waste her.”

“No, that just knocks her out. We have no idea how to kill her yet!” Sam yelled impatiently, putting the book down and sinking deeper into the seat.

“Well, then, lets call Bobby,” Dean suggested.

“I already did. He is on a  Chindi case in Texas. He’s a little busy,” Sam replied lazily.

“What? When did you call him?” Dean demanded.

“When you were playing slumber party with your new boyfriend.”

“Dammit, Sam. He isn’t my boyfriend!”

“A bit defensive? Look, Dean. We both know about Will in high school. And Dan? God knows what you did while I was gone.. But I don’t care, Dean. I know Dad chewed you out, but I don’t care. Really.”

“‘We both know’?” Dean snarled. “You don’t know shit, Sam. Nothing happened. I’ve been hit harder for not cleaning a gun properly.”

“Will’s sister certainly knew all about it,” Sam said calmly, although his eyes squinted at the implication. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Just don’t think that it’s not okay.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dean growled and he turned the volume up on his music.

They sat in relative silence, stopping at some shitty fast food place for some egg biscuit sandwich thing. Sam pouted when there wasn’t a parfait.

They were able to eventually reach the abandoned parking lot that now held a commotion of police officers and ambulances. In the center of the chaos was a male body with his lower half exposed.

“Well, I guess you could say he was caught…”

“You could say a lot, but I will lock you in the trunk of your car,” Sam snarled as he flashed his badge to a nearby officer and proceeded into the center of the confusion. Dean copied the motion and followed after him, swearing under his breath.

It was a different officer than at the last one, a short, balding, ginger man that just continuously huffed as he walked around the body. He jumped a little as he looked up to see Sam next to him, towering over him.

“So what is the story? You said there was a witness?”

“Yeah, there was a witness. I wouldn't go over there just yet.” He said gruffly, nodding his head over to a small, olive skinned girl, clutching onto a shock blanket on the back of the ambulance. Two adults that seemed to be her parents hovered to the side of her, concealing the two paramedics checking the girl over.

“Why was she here?” Sam asked patiently.

“A small girl, and a half-naked creep in an abandoned parking lot? What the fuck do you think happened. The girl was reported missing yesterday morning.” Sam nodded and continued asking questions of the officer.

Dean, instead, continued to stare back at the ambulance. The girl’s parents had moved out of the way, and revealed the two paramedics. One was a beautiful woman, straight, dark hair, with eyes to match. Next to her, was black, messy hair, and a body in too-tight pants…

“I would say the bastard pretty much deserved what he got.” The detective said, lack of remorse and shrugging as Dean fell back into the conversation.

“I would tend to agree with you.” Sam said quietly, following Dean’s line of sight before walking away from the body, the detective and Dean following suit.

“Hasn’t the coroner picked up the body yet?” Dean questioned.

“Traffic is a bitch,” he answered simply, checking his phone. “You boys might want to question the parents yourselves. The kid might not be ready yet, she… The woman had emerged from the other side of the ambulance with a lollipop, giving it to the child, breaking her out in the tiniest of smiles. Cas was standing with the parents, telling them something.

“What’s her name?” Dean interrupted.

“Mollie Hawthorn,” Sam responded quickly. “ Dean, do you even listen?”

“I try not to, it gives me sasquatch pox.” Sam just rolled his eyes at his older brother.

“You boys go talk to the parents and the paramedics. The coroner is almost here and we can get the bastard off the ground and buried six feet beneath it.” The detective clapped Sam on the shoulder.

“Yeah, thanks so much.” Sam said, returning the gesture.

“What the fuck was that?” Dean asked as the little man walked away.

“What do you mean?”

“That little hug thing. You don’t hug me like that.”

“Are you serious right now?” Sam’s eyes could have cut through glass.

“Yeah, I am.”

“It’s called Symbolic Interactionism.”

“What?”

“Just go talk to your boyfriend,” Sam sighed, giving a small push to his brother.

“He’s not my fucking boyfriend, Sam!” His younger brother just gave a stupid grin.

“Hello, Dean.” Suddenly there was hot breath on the back of Dean’s neck. He flipped around, nearly smacking Cas in the face as he did so. “Who is not your boyfriend?” Cas asked, tilting his head just slightly.

“Brad Pitt,” Dean glared.

“You seem much more of a George Clooney person,” Cas said seriously.

“You don’t even watch movies!”

“I’ve seen _ER_ , Dean. I’m not a monster,” Cas said passively, turning to Sam. Dean just stared, infuriated. “Mollie is physically unharmed. She was kidnapped, and was about to be forced to perform fellatio on the deceased, but before anything happened, at least, according to her, he started bleeding out of his nose, and collapsed. She grabbed his phone from the car, and called 911.”

Dean looked behind Cas’s shoulder to watch the little girl sit huddled up in a blanket, a little white stick peering out from her lips, her mother sitting next to her a healthy distance away. The man was talking to another officer. “Will she be okay?” Dean asked quietly, his eyes looking back as Cas, meeting wide blue, softened and sad.

“I hope so. Her parents seem to be willing to do whatever she needs to heal.” Dean took that as a sufficient answer and saw Sam wander off towards the family in his peripherals.

“Do you have kids?” Cas asked abruptly. Dean startled at the question, but recovered and scoffed.

“Naw, I don’t live that type of life. Not good with them anyway. Sam is the only one that had a chance at being a family man.”

“Had?” Cas repeated, eyes narrowed, lips parted…

“Has, with his pussy riot wife and all.”

“His wife is a Russian political activist?” Was Cas closer? Cas seemed to be stepping closer.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Cas whispered, his head tilted. “I try, but I really don't understand what goes on in your head.”

Dean could feel his lips part, mirroring the same confused look that kept his gaze so enticingly. His white shirt fit nicely, form fitting, but not as tight as the navy pants. No matter what, Dean just continued to flicker back to the strange man’s eyes. They were inviting and hostile and sedating and exciting all in two blue dots. Will had had blue eyes too, but they were a cloudy cornflower, no intensity even comparable between them. Eventually, the hunter was able to look down at the ground, breaking whatever power had held his sight. “You don’t want to,” Dean admitted, leaving Cas alone and going over to Sam. The blue-eyed man didn’t follow.

* * *

 

 

_Come over tonight._

The little text was simple and absolute. He didn’t need to recognize the number to know who it was from. What had happened in the last week that had made him such a bitch? Dean wasn’t someones bitch. Not someone to be ordered around and thinking about the impossible depth to some man’s eyes. He was a hunter for God’s sake. A fucking Winchester. No one was going to make a Winchester a fucking bitch. He was an Alpha. He was the oncoming storm.

“You shouldn’t text and drive,” Sam said as he stared out the window, on the way to some college library that had a large collection of Egyptian Mythology books and articles.

“Shut up,” he replied lamely. Another notification. Another text.

_I will buy alcohol._

As if that made a difference. Maybe it did.

“How the fuck did he get my number anyway?” Dean asked, slipping the small phone into his phone into his pocket.

“I gave it to him.”

“You _what_?”

“I gave him your number. It only made sense. He is important to the case. An inside informant.”

“Oh really? Then why didn’t you give him yours?”

“I did,” Sam said smugly, turning to Dean and away from the window.

“Then where is your text message invite to the party at his house?” Dean yelled, getting deeply annoyed.

Sam just laughed, resting his head on the dashboard for a moment, before looking back at his older brother. “Because he doesn’t _like_ me, Dean. We don’t make eye contact across deserted parking lots. He doesn’t invade my space whenever we talk. He doesn’t look around your shoulders to look at _me_. He wants _you_ , in whatever way that may mean for him.” Sam sighed. “Don’t fuck it up,” he added, seriously.

Dean just stared at him, incredulous. No, they were just friends. Cas was a weird, robot friend, but still a friend. He would go over tonight, set the record straight, just to put down Sam’s assumptions, then sit with him, watch a movie, drink a beer. That is what friends did; not that Dean had much experience with normal friends. He supposed the two of them shared that.

“Your problem is that you check them out, but then won’t admit it,” Sam was now looking out the window again, fixated on something on the horizon. “Not even to yourself.”

“I’m not having this conversation,” he grunted back.

“Fine.”

The campus was an hour and a half outside of the city. It was small, but full of students hustling around to get to lectures, internships, and dates. Except for one guy in ripped jeans playing the guitar under a large, canopy tree, serenading the birds.

“Hey, after this, we should go sneak into a sorority,” Dean said, shutting the door to his baby and looking around the sprawling buildings.

“We won’t have time; you have a party tonight.” Dean just gave his brother a dirty look and walked towards the buildings furthest to the right, past the guitarist.

The library was huge, containing a vast number of books that he couldn’t care less about, but that gave nerds like Sam, and probably Cas, a hard on.

Once the man had shown them to the section they needed, the two of them found a quiet corner of the room to do their research. Dean went to grab a random book on the table, but his hand was smacked away, and was instead given a large picture book of the walls of tombs with minimal captions. “These are all old and grainy, what do you expect to find?”

“Look for pictures that resemble a lion, or the other images of Sekhmet, and I will take it from there,” he responded, already deep into thought with the book that Dean had originally grabbed.

The elder brother had never considered himself a genius, but he did have his strong points. Cars, hunting, shooting; things that involved the use of his hands. Squinting at early twentieth century photos for a lion was hardly one of these things.

Eventually, Dean got bored, and got up, looking at all the other books on the shelves. He wandered away from Egyptionology to Greek Mythology and a bunch of other ones he couldn’t pronounce. He found a section on Biblical Lore, and scanned the section, his eyes falling on one that looked familiar.

It was rough in his hands, old and a worn gold color. It was in a mix of latin and english, but he knew enough to get the gist. Angels.

He took it back to the table, and Sam’s eyes hovered over him for a moment, deciding it would at least keep him from slipping off into some girl’s room, and returned to his book.

Dean still couldn’t tell where he had seen it before.

“I thought you didn’t believe in Angels, especially after that case,” Sam said after a while. Dean just shrugged.

“I don’t, it just looked familiar.” There were such details in the hierarchies of heaven. The levels of Angels. Seraphs and Archangels.

“Cas probably has it.” Sam was trying to hide a smile, eyes back on this old text.

“And how do you know that?”

“He mentioned that he had an old collection of religious texts. You probably saw it on your date.” Dean could have hit him. “Anyway,” Sam continued, “I think I found something. So it says that you can stab her with ‘the branch of her poison, dipped in the life blood of a virgin woman.”

“Wait, so we have to waste some girl to kill her?”  Dean looked appalled. “We can’t do that, Sam…”

“I don’t think it is referring to the blood of her veins, Dean.”

“What then?”

“Dean, it is talking about menstrual blood.”

His mouth fell open, and stared at his younger brother in shock. “We have to dip some stick into some chick’s period blood?”

Sam gave a small smirk. “Hey, you wanted to sneak into a sorority.”

“Yeah, stealing some poor girl’s pad isn’t how i thought it would go down.”

“Actually though, the hospital would be easier,” Sam said, collecting the books.

“What do you mean?”

“In a sorority, anyone could be a non-virgin. The hospital would provide much better access.”

“When girls are asked ‘are you a virgin?’ they lie, Sam.”

“Yeah, but if they are kids, say twelve…?” Sam placed the books back on the shelves, leaving only the worn angel book on the table. He looked down at it for a moment, not picking it up.

“We aren’t going to go into some little girl’s room and take her pad.”

“We don’t really have another choice, Dean! Anyway, we have a while to think it over, I need to find a vineyard tonight, and drive down there.”

“What the fuck for?” Dean yelled, getting a stern look from a nearby visitor.

“I need to get a grapevine branch, but it can’t just be the shit from the grocery store, they won’t be strong enough. I need the full stalk.”

Dean just sighed. Neither of them had picked up the old book, and neither made any move to.

“Do you really not believe in Angels?” Sam asked, after a moment.

Grudgingly, Dean picked up the book, flipped through it for a moment, and scoffed. “All these names, Gabriel, Michael, Uriel, Balthazar; Cas’s name fits right in.” Sam took the book softly from his hands, and flipped to the back, smiling. “What?” Dean asked, reaching for the old pages.

Sam flipped the book around, pointing to a small name with a little number next to it.

“Castiel,” Dean read, the name slipping of his tongue like music.

“Looks like you have a guardian angel after all.” Sam couldn’t hide his amusement as he made to put the book away.

“Bitch,” Dean called after him, heading out to his baby.

“Jerk.” Dean could hear the smile on his baby brother’s face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was seven by the time they made it back into the city. Despite Dean’s pleading, they had come to the agreement that Sam needed the car in case a vineyard was close enough to get to that night, and that Sam could either pick him up, or Cas was going to have to drive him back to the motel. Neither option was even mildly appealing to the eldest Winchester. After his man date with Cas, he was going to need some alone time with his baby.

Dean directed his brother to Cas’s home, and when they pulled in, Dean suddenly felt like a twelve year old boy going to his first dance. It didn’t help that Sam was sitting next to him, a smug look on his face as he scanned the row of houses. “Which one?”

“Grey door, roses,  and large, open windows,” he responded immediately.

Sam looked impressed. “Very modern,” he commented.

“It’s very…” Dean searched for the right word, “Posh. Clean, and white. It’s too neat.”

“Does he make you take your shoes off?”

“Yes, there is a mat. The carpet is white.”

“Don’t spill anything,” Sam laughed, reaching across Dean to open his door for him. “Go get ‘em, Tiger.” Dean could have slapped him.

Instead, he got out and slammed the door, which he instantly regretted, and walked up to the grey door. He looked back to see Sam in the Impala, still sitting there, waiting for him to go inside. “I’m not a baby, Sam,” he muttered under his breath.

“I would say not.”

Dean nearly fell down the stairs at the voice. He caught himself on the railing, looking up to see Cas standing there in a dark, fitting, pair of jeans, and another too-tight white shirt. He looked back quickly to see Sam cracking up as he drove away.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the voice was quiet, regret thick in it.

“Whatever,” Dean muttered, pushing past him, and throwing his boots onto the mat next to Cas’s. He stood there then, waiting for Cas to walk up the few steps so he could follow, but he instead closed the door, and stood right in front of him.

“How was your day, Dean?” He was still nervous, as if afraid he had already ruined the night.

Dean took a small step back, up against the wall. “Good, mostly did some research after we left the crime scene.”

“Did you find what you needed?” Cas followed him in step, leaving him pressed against the wall, a face full of vanilla and mint, and… beer. He had already been drinking.

“Kind of. Broke out the booze without me?”

“I thought you weren’t going to come, you never texted back.” He looked sad at the thought, there was too much light in those eyes to be sad…

“Yeah, that was shitty of me.” Damn it, he was caught in them again, hopeless and lost, like some Nicholas Sparks’ novel. Cas was closer now; he could feel each soft breath on his face from between Cas’s parted lips…

“No, matter. You are here now. I have whiskey, and beer. Which would you like?” He moved away, breaking the spell.

“Whiskey,” he almost gasped. “I’ll start with whiskey.” As soon as he said it, Cas had left and disappeared up the stairs.

Dean went up the stairs and into the large, white room, and sat on the couch. He laughed to see that the remote had been placed clearly on the small table for Dean, and as soon as it was in his hands, he was flipping through the available movies.

“What are you in the mood for?” He called as he heard the clink of glass leave the Kitchen. He turned around to see Cas in the balcony hallway, shrugging.

“Whatever you feel like I need to be educated on.”

“Well, that’s a long ass-list,” he muttered to himself.

Cas came down and placed the bottle on the table, along with two glasses. Dean broke his search to take a sip, stopping on The Breakfast Club. “You seen it?” He asked, Cas gave a Sam-worthy bitchface in response, making Dean crack up, and only after downing the whiskey did he stop. Cas, who had no idea what he had done to be so funny, just smiled.

Dean put the movie on, and Cas poured him more of the alcohol and started on his own.

“Careful with that,” Dean warned. “You seem like a lightweight. Don’t drink too fast.” Cas just nodded seriously in response.

They sat in silence for the first twenty minutes of the movie, before Cas stood up, seemingly without prompt, and left the room for the upstairs. Dean’s eyes followed his host, disappearing and reappearing before white walls. Then, Dean smelled the food: a mix of barbeque and onion. His mouth watered, and he finished off another glass of whiskey. Cas reappeared with a plate of wings and onion rings, disappearing again without the chance for Dean to say anything.

The Winchester took the opportunity to bite into a thick onion ring, the center burning the roof of his his mouth slightly, but he continued to eat it anyway, taking in the experience.

And then Cas was next to him, a bowl each of Pringles, Nacho Cheese Doritos, and what looked like Cheddar Sour Cream. “Cas,” he said, taking a handful of  Doritos and shoving them in his mouth, “wura annel.”

The dark haired man looked over at him, eyes tight, head slanted, and confused. “What did you say?” He asked.

Dean just laughed, mouth still full and falling out from his lips. At the sound, Cas softened, and laughed, finishing his drink and pouring them both more. “You gonna eat?” he asked, digging into the wings.

“Maybe in a little, I’m not much into this food.” They both took another sip, Dean to wash down all the food, Cas mirroring his guest.

“Then why did you make it? I can’t eat all of this, Cas.” The other man just gave Dean a skeptical look. “I mean, I can,” he corrected, “but I’m gonna feel like a pig.”

Cas just smiled, and settled back into the movie, taking an onion ring, and ripping it apart in the napkin he placed on his lap, taking off the bread and eating just the onion. Dean smiled at the sight. “I have to get nutrients somehow,” Cas replied, grabbing another to ruin.

“God, you are just like Sam,” he groaned, “I doubt there are many nutrients left.”

“I have to try,” he grinned.

“Whatever.”

The rest of the movie passed without incident, although they seemed to be gradually moving closer, the shoulder of Dean’s leather jacket occasionally brushing against the tight white of Cas’s cotton shirt. Cas continued to match every drop of the whiskey that Dean drank. When Dean switched over to beer, so did Cas, but he could already see the effects that it was having on his host.

“You got yourself a girl?” Dean asked as he put another movie on, this time Jurassic Park.

“No,” he answered simply, his head sinking into the back of the couch.

“What about that pretty EMT that was at the crime scene today?”

“What, Kaya? No, she’s married. Two kids.” The both took another drink.

“Do you want kids?” Dean wasn’t even sure why he asked.

“I do not feel as if I would be a very good father.” He looked sad at the thought. “But you, Dean Evans, would make a wonderful father.”

“Yeah, right.” Dean finished off his entire glass.

“No, I feel it, Dean. I don’t know, I just feel you sometimes. You would be great with kids.” Cas’s eyes were wide and honest, almost pleading for Dean to believe him. “Sometimes, I get these feelings, these insights into people. You are so good, Dean.”

Dean’s eyes were wide. Cas was right in front of him, still sitting next to him but leaning into his face, the whiskey drowning out any smell of food. Vanilla, mint and alcohol. He didn’t think that this man could smell any better...Dean poured and downed another glass of whisky. Cas moved to do the same, but Dean grabbed his wrist. “You’ve had enough,” he laughed lightly, cutting him off.

“I’ve only had as much as you.” It was a wonder that his words weren’t slurred.

“Yeah,” Dean grunted, trying to move away from the other man’s gaze. “I’m not a good example.”

“I think you are.” His eyes were too close again, wide and blue. They were perfect and bright. Dean felt weight on his legs. Cas had climbed on top of him.

“I think you’re drunk,” he said, shoving at Cas’s shoulder.  

“No,” Cas resisted. “Dean, I feel you. In my soul. I don’t know.”

Dean just stared. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t resist the hands that moved to his waist. It was all so familiar. He closed his eyes; it was like high school all over again. But this guy, Castiel…

“Your name was in a book.” Blue eyes narrowed, lips parted, so close that if either moved they would brush together. The weight left, allowing Dean to breathe normally again, and then the couch shifted, Cas returning next to him.

“This one?” He questioned, running his hands over the worn gold cover. This copy at least seemed in a better condition than the one at the library. “It’s strange you happened upon it, I’ve heard it’s relatively rare. My father gave it to me.” Dean couldn’t discern what emotion was in Cas’s voice, it was complex and foreign.

“What was he like?”

“Old and religious.”

Dean gave a forced laugh, “I assumed by your collection of books.”

“It helps, when you get to a scene and someone is beyond saving. It helps them usually, talking about the fields of the Lord. It helps me, knowing that even if I can’t return them to their family, that they will return to their heavenly Father.”

“You know?” Dean asked skeptically.

“I believe,” he restated. “But I suppose they are the same.”

“I think they are at all.”

“You will,” Cas said quietly, getting up and placing the book back on the shelf. When he returned, he returned to his place on Dean’s lap, straddling him with his much more muscular hips.

“What does that mean?” Dean could barely breathe again. Cas was too close, too tempting.

“I was adopted at a young age, but I was already named. My father was a priest visiting the orphanage, and he met me, with my name hidden away in the depths of religious texts. He said I was special, and went through adopting me immediately, although he needed permission from the Bishop. I think you are special too, Dean, I just feel it, in every part of my body. You are someone.”

Dean searched his eyes for the hint of a joke, and found nothing. He was mesmerized. “You are drunk,” he reasoned, not sure if it was directed to Cas, or to himself.

“Maybe,” he responded. Cas’s hands ran themselves over the leather of Dean’s jacket,playing with the zippers, and then down his arms. Dean couldn’t bring himself to stop him. He closed his eyes, breathing Cas in. He pretty much discounted all that shit about God and fields of the Lord, but it didn’t make him want Cas any less. He tried holding his breath in the back of his throat, but the smell of him still lingered in his brain.

Dean opened his eyes once he felt hands disappear from his jacket. He saw nothing but blue eyes, and black lashes before he felt warm lips on his own. It was instantaneous, but his hands went to Cas’s waist, pulling him in, biting at his bottom lip. He could feel Cas peeling off his leather jacket, and moved his arms as directed. The dark haired man made it clear who was in charge.

And Dean obeyed, perhaps for the first time in his life. Cas worked off all the layers on Dean’s back, and in return. Dean ran his hand up Cas’s fit body, taking off the skin tight shirt. For the first time, Dean was slightly ashamed of the small amount of pudge around his middle as he ran his hand up abs and pecs.

Cas, didn’t seem to feel the same, running his hands adoringly over Dean’s stomach and sides, pushing him down on the couch and climbing on top. Dean tried to push him off and climb on top, but instead earned a bite on his lip so hard that he swore it broke the skin.

Dean was, however, able to break their lips apart long enough to bring his lips to the base of Cas’s neck. Licking over his adams apple, biting at his collar bone, kissing and adoring up and down the sensitive branch of skin. Hearing the deep moan from Cas was gorgeous beyond anything else he had ever heard.

In response, the toned man rubbed the bulge in his jeans teasingly against Dean’s, giving a deep chuckle as he went back to biting at Dean’s lips.

“Have you-” he was cut off by a gasp, a particularly rough kiss and movement of Cas’s hips. “Have you done this before?” Dean finally got out.

Cas just laughed and rubbed his hand over the front of Dean’s jeans, earning a buck of his hips. “Have you?”

“Mmm, ‘asked you first.” Cas kissed the bulge. “Yes, but you are better.”

Their lips met again, along with the front of their jeans, both moving against one another, grabbing, kissing, biting at anything and everything they could. Broken gasps and moans floating in the air above them.

Dean was overwhelmed. He granted Cas access to every part of his body as directed, not able to stop himself from grabbing onto the other man’s hips, fingers begging him to move faster, harder against his pelvis. But Cas had an impossible control over himself, despite the alcohol, despite the gasping and moans, despite Dean being able to tell he wanted it as much as himself. When Dean would try to move his hand down to Cas’s bulge, he would be met with a slap on the wrist and would temporarily lose authority over that hand, the other man, holding it into the couch above his head. Dean couldn’t say he minded.

Neither of them were going to last much longer, even with four layers of fabric between the skin of their hips, it was too much to keep going. Cas wasn't going to stop, and Dean didn’t want him too.

As he got close, Dean grabbed both sides of Cas’s face, ramming his tongue over every part of Cas’s mouth he could. He lost control of the kiss as Cas ran his tongue over the roof of his mouth where Dean had burned himself earlier.

“Look at me,” Cas commanded, the man pressed to the couch lost himself in blue eyes, and dug his nails into the skin just above Cas’s jeans and he came, breaking the kiss as his mouth flew open. The other man quickly followed hiding his face in Dean’s neck, biting his collar as he came.

Dean could feel the wetness held against his skin by his pants, but couldn’t bring himself to move or care.

Cas moved only to position his legs more comfortably into a laying position, and kissed Dean’s neck softly before beginning to trace designs on the other side of Dean’s neck with one finger. Neither said anything, both easing into a serene sleep.

Dean was already unconsciousness by the time the hand Cas had been drawing with had fallen to the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for why this was so late. Sorry. Happy Late Valentines Day!


	6. Sex and Violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New username! Sorry, things happened with the last one... Also, this chapter was beta read by the lovely Alana, who can be found here (http://hallowedbecastiel.tumblr.com/).

Green eyes flashed open, immediately closing as the bright, harsh light from the morning sun filtered in through the vast window above him. He rolled over, getting a face full of couch, but at least it stopped the sun.

It took him a moment to remember that he wasn’t supposed to be able to roll over. As of his last conscious moment, there had been a body on top of his. Dean’s hand immediately went down to the front of his pants.

“Shit,” he groaned, rolling further into the couch backing, just now feeling the dry cum hardened on his dick and pants. He hoped that he had a spare pair of jeans in the Impala. He did not feel like trying to explain the stain to Sam, but Sam had the Impala. Dean groaned louder and for a moment he thought about how difficult it would be to suffocate himself in the pillow. Cas would probably have a coronary trying to clean up the stains from a dead body on his couch.

Where the fuck was he anyway?

With a grunt, Dean forced himself into an upright position, blinking violently at the light. The alcohol and food from the night before had vanished, and was replaced instead with cinnamon rolls, orange juice, coffee, and sausage. Jesus Christ, he was lusting after Martha Stewart.

Against his better judgement, he took a bite out of the gooey roll. A little cold, but good all the same. He guessed that Cas must have left for work, and wondered if the guy knew how to take care of a hangover. There was no way the other man was going to be able to avoid one after trying to keep up with Dean.

Dean nibbled at the food, and continued to look around. Any mess made last night was cleaned up; even the pillows that they had messed up in their late night activity had been fluffed, and put back in order.  

After consuming the majority of the food, Dean took the opportunity to tour Cas’s house. The dining room was much like the rest of his home: sterile, light, open, and seemingly unused. He continued upstairs, skipping the room that he had found himself in the other morning, and went straight into Cas’s room.

It seemed to be a major bachelor pad, minus the creepy cleanliness of it all. He walked in, and straight ahead was a huge bed, perfectly made. A large stereo hooked up to a laptop was immediately to the right of the door. To the left, was another set of stairs.

The stairs led to a loft that housed several work-out machines that Dean probably couldn’t name. “Shit”, he whispered, “he wasn’t kidding about working out.”

Dean further wandered around the room before he came to the master bathroom. Immediately, he stripped down, taking the semen-caked underwear and pants off, and turned on the shower as hot as he could get it.

The water threatened to boil his skin away, and he hissed the moment he stepped in, but left the temperature on as it was. All the shampoo and body washes had some special “nutrient addition for a clean scalp”, so he skipped and went for the body wash instead.

After so many sketchy motels, it shouldn’t feel weird to scrub his balls of semen in the house of his strange friend, but it felt weird nonetheless.

He hadn’t gotten all the reminders from last night off his skin before it started playing itself in his head. Cas’s lips, his fingers, his hips…”Dammit,” he groaned, the blood in his body all heading south.  

So here he was, jacking off in Cas’s shower. His hands running down his cock, pretending that they were Cas’s. Dean tried to switch to thinking of the porn he had stuffed under the seat of the Impala, his Busty Asian Beauties, but his mind had other ideas, and he kept finding himself seeing blue eyes and pale skin, looking down to see dark hair hovering over his chest, finding all the sensitive spots, holding back a plea to go down further….

“Castiel,” he moaned, arching his head back against the wall, letting the hot water run down his open neck.

Slightly dizzy, Dean finished his shower quickly, and climbed out, running his hands through his hair, not bothering to look for a towel as he walked back out into Cas’s room, looking for the closet. There was no way that he was putting his spoiled jeans and underwear back on, so he might as well just take advantage of the situation.

The closet was a walk in, T-shirts and pants alike hung up neatly on hangers. Dean was beyond thankful that they at least were not color coded, although most of the fabrics up were blue, grey, or white, or of some variation. There was, however, a pink and yellow Hawaiian shirt toward the back of the closet. He was going to have to remember to ask about that later.

The main problem was that while Cas was much more muscular than Dean, his waist was apparently smaller. He was only a little taller than the other man, but as he tried on the jeans and clumsily hung them back up, he couldn’t find a pair that wasn’t making his little bit of pudge hang over the side more than he would like.

Eventually, he decided on a large pair of Cas’s work pants and resolved that if Sam said anything, he would run him over with the Impala.

Once dressed in Cas’s clothes, he went back into the bathroom, and sat down on the cool tile, rummaging through the discarded jeans to find his phone.

Three missed calls.

Shit. Sam was going to be pissed. He dialed the number, and his younger brother immediately picked up.

“Dean, what the fuck. It’s noon. I know that you had a sleepover, but…”

“Can you come pick me up?” Dean was bored of this conversation. He just wanted to continue working on the case and not have Sam go all mother hen on him.

“Yeah,” Sam said before hanging up.

Still on the floor, Dean folded his pants in a way that would probably make Cas wince, and threw back on the shirt he had last night. Heading back downstairs, he made no effort to clean up any other mess that he had left.

He sat on the couch, sipping at the room temperature orange juice as he waited for his brother. A knock at the door startled him, there was no way that Sam was here already.

Despite not living there, he answered the door anyway. A small, young, brunette woman was at the door, holding a pamphlet. She looked shocked at the unfamiliar man in the doorway.

“Oh, hello. Um, is Castiel here?” She question nervously, looking past Dean and into the house.

“He left, you need something?”

“Not really, I just needed to give him this,” she said, putting the paper into his hand. Something about a blood drive.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, about to shut the door.

“Wait!” She gave a small yell, grabbing onto the door’s edge.

“Jesus! You are gonna get your hand chopped off doing that,” he scolded.

“Sorry. I just- Castiel never seems to have company, and I’ve just never seen you before. Are you lost family? A co-worker?,” she looked at his pants.

“Nope, just a friend with stuff to do,” he said, shutting the door again.

“Are you his boyfriend?” She yelled before he could shut it. Dean flew the door open, almost smacking her in the face.

“What?”

“I mean, he never has shown interest in any girls, and he doesn’t have any friends or family, and I was just wondering,” she rushed, her face reddening.

“What,” Dean asked again, dazed.

“Nevermind. Just tell him Daisy came over, okay?”

“Okay,” Dean repeated as the girl fluttered down the steps, and out to her car, parked in Cas’s spot. It wasn’t until she left when he closed the door and sat back down on the couch. That was weird. He decided it's just better to forget the experience, and sat the pamphlet on the little glass table next to his almost empty tray, sinking back into the couch until another, rougher knock was at the door.

Grabbing the soiled jeans, he went to the door and opened it abruptly, closing it straight behind him and went right past Sam and to his baby. The pants were thrown into the back seat, and he slid into the drivers seat of the Impala. “Give me my keys, Sam!” He yelled as his brother approached the opposite door.

“Answer a question first,” he teased, yelling through the window, dangling the keys in front of his face.

“I will cut off your hair while you sleep.”

“So rude,” Sam laughed, throwing the keys in his brother’s direction as he slid into the passenger seat.

“Whatever. So do you have a lead, or did you just blog about my life all night?”

“I got the branch; it is in the trunk, but we need to get blood for that.”

“Yeah, that can be your job,” Dean dictated as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Everything seems to be my job this case,” Sam commented, looking out the window. “Turn left,” he said, sinking back into the Impala’s seat. Dean did as instructed, and sped down the long, relatively empty road.

“So, is that all you did? Find a stick?” He questioned, calmed now that he was driving his baby, and keeping most of the thoughts of last night away.

“Nope,” he responded, popping the last half of the word.

“And?” Dean pressed after a minute.

“I found our connection.” Dean looked over at his smiling brother who was holding up a file. “How much do you know about Harding’s past?” Sam asked as he flipped through the papers.

“Minimal,” he admitted. “I knew him as a kid with Dad, saw him when we came into town, and he told me that he had wrapped up the case. The rest ended in a beer and a car and an aneurysm.”

“Did you know he was married?” Sam asked.

“Should we go see her? Tell her what happened?”

“He was married. She filed abuse charges against him three years ago. They didn’t stick, and she filed for divorce.”

“Damn,” Dean responded after a moment. “Didn’t realize he was that type of guy.”

“An asshole?” Sam wondered aloud.

“I was thinking worse language than that.” Dean quieted for a minute, watching the bark of the trees blend together. “So what was your connection?”

“The creep who went after the little girl? An abusive husband? Sekhmet is a woman, Dean. And there is more. So get this, that guy that was just found in the woods? He was cheating on his wife with a college student.”

“So the Goddess is avenging women? Taking out the patriarchy, kicking ass, taking names?”

“She is killing people, Dean. I mean, I know that they all might have deserved it, but how long until she starts going after every little thing? Until she comes after you?”

“What did I do?” Dean huffed. “I haven’t even touched a woman until we got into town.

“Like she doesn’t know your track record.”

“My track record?” Dean looked incredulously over at his little brother.

“I’m just saying that you aren’t exactly known as a gentleman, Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, sinking lower into the seat. That connection really doesn’t help us out though, Sam.”

“It’s still something.”

“So how are we going to find her? Do we have to track down every asshole in the city? I feel like that is not going to be so easy.”

“I don’t know,” Sam sighed, “I think it will be better to go back to the motel and figure it out from there. I also need to find a laundromat. We are running out of clean clothes.”

“We never have clean clothes,’ Dean laughed, the sound filling the car.

“You always have clean clothes, and you should thank me one day.”

“Naw,” Dean laughed, pulling into the driveway. “I thank you enough with my presence.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

For the time being, Dean decided to leave the stained jean in the back of the car. They would have to go back out again when they finally did laundry, so it hardly mattered.

“Fuck,” he said as he pocketed his keys and pulled out a gun as he approached the door. Sam didn’t say anything, and copied the motion without direction before he saw the unlocked and ajar door to their room.

Dean held out his gun steadily, eyes flashing back at Sam to make sure he was ready before they threw open the door. His nerves were steel. For a man that could hardly get through a page of a book most days, his focus when it came to this was absolute.

All the books and papers had been pushed off the dirty table and onto the dirtier floor. The lights were on, and a single bottle of wine was in a gold bucket on the table with three glasses spread out around it.

“It is rude to make a woman wait.”

At the head of the table was a tall, muscular, dark woman, with slick black hair down her back. She held up her already filled glass to the Winchesters. “Sit,” she commanded.

Guns still out, the boys took small steps to the small table, and cautiously sat down. All the while, they watched her eyes, the entire surface of which contained gradients of gold and bronze, with one black iris. Inhuman.

“For a woman who has been alive since ancient egypt, you have perfectly manicured eyelashes and eyebrows,” Dean commented, watching her pour the red wine into a glass and set it in front of him.

“My nails too,” she added conversationally, smiling and pouring more of the bottle into Sam’s glass. The elder Winchester felt a sting down his right cheek, and watched as she wiped a single drop of blood off of her sharpened nails. The woman held the napkin out to Dean, as he put his fingers to his own cheek to asses the damage. “It isn’t polite to comment on a woman’s age.”

Although her movements were controlled, Dean couldn’t help but feel like nothing but small prey for the woman. She was a predator. It spread from her with controlled malice, but hinting at a limit to her restraint. It wasn’t hard to imagine blood on her full lips and perfectly white teeth.

“Your books don’t do me justice,” she gestured to the discarded papers on the floor. “I also can’t do that half-lion visage. I’m an all or nothing type of woman.”

“So you are Sekhmet?” Sam asked, having moved his glass of wine to the side.

“In the flesh, Sam Winchester.”

“How do you know us anyway?” Dean questioned, wishing that the grapevine branch was in his jacket rather than the Impala’s trunk.

“How do I know of the hunters that are trying to kill me? I knew the moment that you came into town. I tried to kill you too.”

“Why didn’t you just give him an aneurysm?” Sam questioned, genuinely interested.

Sekhmet’s laugh filled the room. “Two men die in a car of the same thing simultaneously? I am old, not out of touch. I simply wished to kill two birds with one stone, unfortunately, one little birdy seems to have a high tolerance for stones.”

“Why not a plague then? Wipe out all the men?” He inquired further

“Dirty. And besides, my strength is not what is was a few thousand years ago. Once there were cults all over Egypt dedicated to praising me, now I have little next to nothing. Enough to kill, but not on such a large scale.”

“You still have your style,” Dean praised as he looked over the gold and white tight fitted dress. “A little more Greek than Egyptian, however.”

“It’s a phase,” She responded. “Really, you boys must not refuse a drink. It is highly rude.”

“So is killing people.”

“Monsters are people. Gods are people. You would have no qualms about sinking a blade helm-deep into me.”

“It’s not the same at all.”

“Regardless, you still haven’t taken even a sip of your wine.”

Dean glared and downed it, maintaining eye contact all the while. Her face held a spark of amusement as he gingerly placed the glass on the table.

“So you just want to kill all the men?” He glared, continuing the conversation.

“Of course not. Just the rotton of the bunch. Sam has never done any grievous offense to a woman. Neither has your boyfriend, Castiel. In fact, he is a little feminist if I ever saw one.”

“So this is the face of third-wave feminism?”

“Hardly,” she scoffed. “A Godess gets their power from prayer, generally. So when the prayers stop, so does my life. I found, however, that killing does the job well enough. This isn’t about some vigilante justice, Dean. It’s survival. I might as well take the scum of the earth off of it. It’s a win for both of us. Would you rather I left that girl in the parking lot with that man?”

Both Winchesters had fallen silent, unsure what to do now. Sekhmet stood up from the table, and grabbed the bottle by the neck.

“There really isn’t anything that you can do,” she whispered, smiling. “You can soak as many sticks in blood as your heart desires, but it doesn’t change anything.

“I’ll give you one warning,” she continued. “Let me go in peace, and there will be no harm. Leave town, and let this place leave your mind. Nothing bad will come of it.” Sekhmet made it to the doorway, the bottle of wine swinging at her side, before Dean picked up the gun that he had dropped into his lap and shot her straight at the back.

It all happened too fast for Sam to tell him no.

The bottle fell out of Sekhmet’s hands as she flipped around. It was immediately evident that she had lied about not being able to turn into half a lion. Her claws were in Dean’s flesh before the bottle could hit the ground, shattering and staining the pages and books red with wine. He could already see pools of blood through the fabric of his older brothers shirt, but he had no idea how deep the wounds were.

Dean’s back was on the floor before Sam could get up. There was a low moan and then nothing as Dean’s body went limp on the cheap carpet.

Sekhmet’s figure rose and went back to her "human" form, red now joining the white and gold patterns on her dress. She stood over Dean for a minute before looking back to Sam who just stood next to his chair, unsure if it was him or Dean now who was in immediate danger.

The goddess straightened herself, removed the blood from her clothing, and stepped over the glass on her way out.

“He should be fine so long as he doesn’t bleed out,” she said as she paused in the doorway before heading out and carefully shutting the door behind her.

Sam fumbled for the phone in his pocket as he ran to his bleeding brother. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered, trying to balance the phone between his shoulder and ear while freeing Dean of the ruined fabric and looking for the closest, relatively clean towel or shirt. “Shit, Dean. Oh, hello? I need an ambulance at…”

Dean slowly opened his eyes at his brothers voice. “Fuck. Did the bitch leave any of the wine?”

Sam clicked off the phone at the sound of the elder’s voice, tossing it away with a “Sir!” at the other end. Dean assumed that Sam had told the voice enough to get them here. “Damnit, Dean, you just had to make it difficult,” groaned Sam as he disappeared for a moment before returning with a clean towel. “Don’t move,” he ordered.

“I can’t,” Dean’s voice broke as he said it. “Sammy, I can’t move.”

“It’s just shock or something,” Sam hushed, trying to figure out the best way to cover all of the gashes at once with pressure.

“Damnit, Sam! I can’t move! My spine or my legs or, or…” Sam watched as Dean’s eyes filled with water.

“Does your chest hurt?” Sam asked, having to hold the upper part of Dean down now.

“Of course it fucking hurts, but that isn’t the largest issue right now…”

“Well then it’s not your spine. Stop moving or you are going to fucking bleed out.”

It wasn’t long before they heard sirens moving into the shitty hotel’s parking lot. The manager probably assumed that someone had an overdose in the bathtub or something. Once they could hear voices, Sam ran out to open the door and Dean heard him say “my brother, my brother was attacked while I was gone.”

Somewhere amidst the voices, there was a deep and rough “Dean!”

“Don’t move him, he said something about his spine…” Sam trailed off as warm, strong hands began pressing on his chest, followed by slighter, but not weaker, ones on his stomach.

“Hello, Dean,” It was the same voice that had called his voice a moment ago, but it was now steady and serene. “Can you hear me, Dean?”

“No,” he answered simply, keeping his eyes shut. Don’t wince, don’t wince, he chanted in his head as his torso was being prodded and wrapped and pushed on.

“Can you look at me? If you can look at me, I won’t pry your eyes open and shine a light into it.” The statement was causation enough, and Dean opened his eyes to see the stone-set face of Castiel. No, his eyes were bigger, they were worried and looked ruined. He looked a little hung-over still, too. Dean hoped that the other man being such as lightweight wouldn’t get him killed.

“Sam said you couldn’t move? Can you move your arms?” Dean responded simply by lightly slapping the other man on the wrist. “Okay, good. Can you move your head?” Dean shook his head no.

“We need to secure him, Castiel,” another voice said, this one softer but still held conviction. “I’m not taking any chances.”

“Of course,” Cas agreed. “The sooner we can get him out of here the better.”

The other hands left, leaving just Dean and Cas alone and surrounded by twenty other people that were hovering outside the door.

“You drunk?” Dean asked as softly and lightly as he could given the circumstances.

“Nothing that will stop me from fixing you,” he answered, busy with Dean’s wounds.

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“Not drunk.”

“Hungover?”

“A little,” he said with a small smile. “Aren’t you in so pain? On a scale of one to ten how bad is

it?”

“Four.”

“Four?” Cas asked, incredulous. More worry leaked into his face.

More people came back over with a head brace and board. “Cas, don’t let them put me in that thing,” he eyed the contraption with a distrusting  look.

“I promise that you will be okay, we need to get you to the hospital, Dean.”

“We don’t get as much time to chat this time, I guess,” Dean winked, despite the sinking feeling that everything would not be okay, as he still couldn’t move his legs.

“Don’t puke on my shoes, okay?” The idea of a sad smile flirted with Cas’s lips, as they moved Dean over onto the stretcher and Cas strapped his head in.

“I’m getting dizzy,” Dean said quietly as they rolled him away and into the ambulance. “Is Sam coming?”

“He is going to meet us there,” someone other than the voice he was trying to hear assured him.

Dean had to close his eyes. He was surprised that he was able to stay coherent so long with the loss of blood. “Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?” He asked, voice even again. It sounded like he was messing with something in the ambulance.

“Don’t leave, okay? At least not until Sammy gets here.”

“I’ll...”

The world faded out for a moment, Cas’s voice trailing away. His eyes blinked open, and he saw Cas’s jaw, but it was too bright and he closed them again.

“Dean, can you hear me? Dean I need you to…”

He tried to hold onto the voice, but it was no use. His body gave out on him.

* * *

“You are a fucking idiot.”

He woke up confused in another white, sterile room. This was becoming more of a habit than he liked.

“Do you want to know why you are an idiot?” The voice spoke again.

“Why?” He asked it, voice rough and prompting him to cough. The body of the voice held up a cup of water and straw to Dean’s chapped lips.

“Oh good, you are awake. That makes this much more satisfying.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk. Stupid. Moronic. Do you want me to go on?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“Why the fuck would you shoot a God that was leaving, Dean?”

“I don’t remember, I probably had a good reason though.”

“I doubt that,” Sam scorned, bitchfacing him and returning the cup to the small table.

“How long has it been?” Dean asked, looking around, but the curtains covered the window and gave no hint to the time of day.

“Like, a couple hours. It’s still only about 1pm.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, Cas said he would come back as soon as his shift ended. He seemed really worried, Dean.”

“Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious, Dean…”

“So what is the final damage?” Dean asked, breathing easier that he could wiggle his toes now, despite feeling cloudy. “I see that my back isn’t broken.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked, surprise and confusion lighting his face.

“I can move my legs. Barely, but we are getting there.”

“Dean, they did a CT scan and everything, they aren’t sure that you are going to be able to walk again,” Sam hushed.

“No,” Dean insisted, moving his toes again under the blankets.

“Dean, I know this is hard…”

“It’s not that hard, Sam.”

“Dean, I saw the break!”

“Sam, look!” Dean pulled the covers up as high as he could, showing of the movement of his bare toes, and attempting to flex his ankles. “The biggest problem we have is the scars I am going to have all over my chest.”

Sam just stared at the bottom of Dean’s bed before hitting the ‘nurse’ button on Dean’s bed. “I don’t believe it,” he said slowly.

Apparently, no one else could either. Just about every doctor in the hospital came to see Dean. They pushed him down for another set of imagings, then took another when they saw the new image. They would have kept going if Sam hadn't cut them off, saying the radiation was too much at once.

An army of men in white coats stared at the set next to one another, while Dean sat bored in his bed.

“Can I go home now?” He tried to interrupt.

“It’s not possible,” One doctor wondered.

“It’s a miracle.”

“Did someone switch out the images?”

“This isn’t possible!”

“There must have been a mistake.”

“That boy must have a guardian angel.”

After a few hours, and immense prompting by Sam, the mob of white coats had cleared out, leaving the two of them alone in the hospital room. Recently drugged again for pain, Dean fought to stay awake. “Are they going to let me leave?”

“It’s doubtful. You are a medical mystery. They will keep you here as long as they can. Anyway, your stitches are going to come out if you move too much.

Dean groaned and looked out the window that Sam had opened. “Cas said he should be here in an hour or so,” Sam said after a minute.

“Who said I wanted to see him?” Dean retorted, sarcasm still evident in his groggy voice.

“Your face did, idiot. When he gets here, I am probably going to leave and clean up the motel.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go be all domestic.”

“Yeah, you know, cleaning up the blood and wine after a lion goddess attack. We should have a 60’s sitcom. Live studio audience.”

“God, Sam. You are such a bitch.”

Sam rolled his eyes and walked out of the room, saying something about burgers. In his absence, Dean felt himself slowly fall back asleep.

* * *

 

“Good morning, Sunshine.”

“Hmm,” was his only response. Dean managed to open his eyes long enough to look out the window. It was dark. That was enough for him. That meant sleeping.

“Dean?” The voice said again. He was awake enough now to hear the husk in the voice. The slight sense of worry despite best efforts to stay calm.

His eyes fluttered open as he felt cold plastic on his lips. A straw. He took a sip of the cool water, and once he started he realized how parched he was and drank the remaining liquid.

“Are you hungry? Sam left you food.”

“Extra onions?” He asked, eyes still closed.

There was a ruffle of a paper bag and aluminum before he heard a small but authoritative “yes. Extra onions.”

“Gimme,” he said, feeling the full weight of his starvation. IV’s just weren’t enough.

“You need to sit up.”

Dean finally opened his eyes fully to glare at the man next to him. “You are going to choke,” Cas clarified, standing up from the chair and offering his arms out to help him up.

“I can do it,” Dean grumbled, and despite burning lines through his chest, and several grunts, he was sitting up enough to Cas’s satisfaction, and had the burger in his hands, and fries on his lap.

Cas watched him carefully as he ate, and Dean was sure that he was fighting to not criticize the amount he chewed or the bite size he was taking. Thankfully, he remained quiet, whatever he was thinking.

“You want some?” He asked after a moment, handing out the half eaten burger. Cas looked at it questioningly, and shook his head slightly.

“You need to eat, Dean. I have your dessert once you finish your dinner.”

“Desert?”

“I picked you up a slice of pie from some diner on the way here.”

Dean hid a smile in his burger as he took another bite. “Picked me up a beer, too?”

“I thought that would be inappropriate.”

“Yeah, well. You think they are going to let me out of here tonight?” Dean asked.

“I doubt it. And you really shouldn’t insist. You need medical care, at least for tonight.”

Dean considered that. Really, he knew what he wanted to ask, but couldn’t shake the implication. He could ask to go home with Cas, could spend another night at his house, but he still wasn’t sure how he felt about last time. He didn’t know what was happening to him. This wasn’t High School anymore. Experimenting was for pimply teenagers, not hunters. He didn’t have time for that.

“How are you feeling?” Cas asked after the Winchester's pause. Dean shoved some fries into his mouth and shrugged.

“Been better,” he said through chews.

“I’m sure.”

“Been worse too.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Cas said with a smile.

“Did Sam leave?”

“Yes. He asked me to stay for a while and make sure you were okay. He went back to the motel to clean up.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” he grumbled, waiting for the right time to ask for pie.

“I don’t intend to babysit you,” Cas said, reaching for something behind him. “I’m just here as a friend, Dean.” The other man held out a full, personal pie to the man in the hospital bed.

“If this is what friends do, I need more of them,” Dean said, inhaling the scent. “One of yours came over by the way.”

“I can’t fathom who you mean,” Cas said, tilting his head in anticipation of an answer.

“Lily, or something. She left something about a blood drive,” he rushed the words in between bites.

“Daisy?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, yes. I promised to volunteer.”

“Aren’t you a good little disciple.”

“I try to be,” Cas said softly, ignoring the hinted sarcasm and malice in Dean’s voice. Dean watched his hands tense around his knees. The dark haired man squinted his eyes and looked out the window despite there being nothing to see.

“You could stay with me tonight.”

“What?”

“You could stay at my house tonight. They might be more willing to release you to me. I don’t have work tomorrow morning.” Cas’s eyes, usually wide and piercing, fell to his own lap. From what Dean could see, they were still bright.

“Sure,” Dean said automatically. He had none of the hesitation that Cas held. Whether it was because of the desire to get the fuck out of here, the drugs, or something else that had to do with the man sitting next to him, he was more than ready to go home to a practical stranger’s house in the condition he was in.

“I already asked Sam if I could. He said that ‘you were a grown man’ and ‘just don’t let him die’,” Cas admitted.

“I’m feeling the brotherly love.”

“You should.” He replied seriously, standing up. “I’m going to go see about your release papers,” he said, leaving the room without a sound.

Panic set in. Was what happened last night expected? Probably not since Dean’s scars would most likely start bleeding.

Still, Dean couldn't hide to himself that there was no place else he had rather be.

Cas came back in quickly, arguing with one of the many doctors that had come into his room earlier. He had no idea whether or not this was the woman actually in charge of his care, and he didn’t care anyway.

“Yes, I have seen the papers, Dr. Wood. Yes, I have seen the images. No, I do not care. Dr. Wood, this man doesn't want to be here, and he has someone that is willing to take care of him tonight. No, I don’t care about the medical mystery. I care that this man is getting the care he needs, and it seems to me that you would rather sit around and speculate about his back, which is now fine, than deal with the wounds on his front torso.”

Dean watched as Cas swelled with impatience at every word. Although he always carried himself with a passive authority, he hadn’t noticed the sheer power behind the serene facade.

“Linda. I am taking this man to my home, where I will be sure he doesn't bleed to death. I do not care. Get me the papers.”

The woman stared blankly for a moment before rushing out of the room, assumingly looking for these papers. Once she was gone, Cas took a small breath and sat down once again next to Dean’s bed.

“I may need them to give you some high pain meds. You can’t be hooked up to the IV once you leave. I will ask Dr. Wood if she can make that happen.”

“You and her have a grudge?” Dean asked, licking the last pie remnants off his fork.

“No,” he replied curiously. “Why would you assume that?”

“I dunno. Just seemed like there was some pent up anger.”

“I don’t like people who waste my time,” he said simply, looking back towards the door.

“Is that why you have no friends?” Dean asked, gauging the other man’s mood.

“Maybe,” a small smiled flirted with his lips again. “I have you.”

The woman came in before Dean could react, showing him lines to sign and papers to read.

“Could we get some pain meds to go?” Cas asked sweetly. Dean had never noticed how awkward yet charming he was around other people. “He might need them for a while.”

“Of course,” she said, taking a copy of the papers out of the room with her.

“How are you doing?” Cas asked, walking over the bag attached to Dean’s arms and examined its contents.

“Why aren’t you a doctor?” Dean asked suddenly, looking up at the man’s smooth jaw. Dean hadn't realized how perfectly Cas’s long lashes framed his eyes before he looked down on him.

“You have to talk to people a lot more,” he answered before looking away. “I think they should change your bandages before we leave.” Without a warning, the other man left the room, leaving Dean with Cas’s bullshit answer.

* * *

Cas’s plastic car was comfortable, although he would never admit it. The seats would never be as nice as his black leather, but the ability to lay back in the seat was definitely a plus.

However, the driving was a nightmare. Cas was an overly careful driver, being sure to obey every traffic law and maintained a perfect speed limit. Dean took to occasionally throwing the spare change from the cupholder at Cas whenever he was bored.

“I’m glad to see you are feeling better,” Cas smiled, looking over at Dean for the first time instead of the road.

“Of course,” he said, sinking back and throwing another dime at the driver. Dean was delighted that it made it’s way down the front of his shirt.

“Is this what you do when you are at bars?” Cas asked, ignoring the cold metal down his shirt.

“Not if I want to get laid.”

“I see. And what do you do if you want to do that?”

“You said ‘do’ three times,” Dean smiled.

Cas sighed and turned into the parking lot that Dean had recently become so familiar with.

Dean started to pull himself out of the seat before his effort ended with a low moan. “Stay here a minute,” Cas ordered, getting out of the car. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Cas run up to the house and open the door before coming back to help Dean out.

Dean hadn’t even managed to unbuckle his seat belt, and Cas reached across the wounded man’s lap to do so. “It’ll probably just be easier to carry you inside,” he stated, leaning against the open door.

“What? No, it’s fine. Besides, you are probably not going to be able to carry me anyway.”

“I’ve carried you before,” the other man challenged, looking down at the man in the car.

“What, when?” Dean asked frantically, searching through his memory. “Oh, yeah,” he said hushed as the memory returned to him.

“Come on,” Cas grunted as he slid one strong arm behind Dean’s back, and another beneath his thighs. Once he had the slightly larger man in his arms, he proceeded to kick the door closed and moved towards the house. “Do you have your meds?” He asked, looking back to the car. Dean merely nodded.

Cas had to slide into the doorway sideways to fit them both in the small space. Again, kicking the door behind him, the dark haired man carried Dean up the stairs and into the master bedroom.

Dean hadn’t had the chance to sample the bed this morning. It was much more comfortable than that of the couch or guest bedroom. His body instantly conformed to the give of the mattress.

“Do you want something to drink?” Cas asked once Dean was settled. “I’m not giving you beer,” he added before Dean could make the request.

“Just water. I guess it’s time to take my pills.” Cas nodded and disappeared from the room.

This bed really was comfy. He hadn’t thought of Cas as a man who liked tempurpedic mattresses, but he supposed he really didn’t know anything about the other man in the first place.  

When Cas came back with the water, he gave the cup to Dean and sat at the end of the bed, legs crossed.

“I don’t want to kick you out of your bed,” he choked as he swallowed the pill too fast.

“I will be fine, I assure you,” he smiled, taking the empty cup from Dean and setting it in his lap.

Dean gulped. Did he press the issue? He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted out of all of this, he didn’t even know what ‘this’ was, but he did know that he wanted the other man to not leave, and wake up to him. Dean was almost disgusted with himself.

“Really,” he insisted, mouth dry despite just drinking the water. “Stay.”

Cas’s lips parted just slightly, head tilting, eyes squinting. Dean could only guess that he was judging the validity of the words. Blue eyes met the green for a moment, and Dean watched as the stranger’s face softened as he moved off of the bed. “Let me get changed.”

“You should just get changed here. What if my stitches break while you are gone?” Dean was about to regret the words, until he saw a little “o” form itself on Cas’s lips, mimicking the roundness of his wide eyes.

“Okay,” the words fell automatically off of his lips. He moved over toward the closet, and pulled out a pair of of sweatpants, and a tshirt.

“Don’t bother getting dressed,” shit shit shit shit...Cas paused with his back to Dean, and let the clothes drop to the floor. Grabbing the shirt from the collar, Cas pulled the soft fabric off his back, revealing ripples of rough muscle just under the skin. He loosened the dark blue pants and let them fall down over his equally ripped hips and legs, leaving him just in black boxers that were just the slightest bit  too tight on him.

“Take them off,” Dean said softly from the bed. Cas obeyed, and ran his hand through his hair as the stood naked, facing the wall. Dean didn’t even know that a man could have that firm of a butt.

“I prayed for you,” Cas said, his voice deepening as he continued. “There was no way that you didn’t break your back. I saw the images. There was a clear break; I could feel it as we lifted you onto the stretcher. I could feel your body about to rip in half and collapse. And I prayed, over and over again. To every saint, to God, to Jesus. Every angel name I knew I called to. Then I came in to see you, and Sam told me that it was gone, that you would be able to walk and move.” Cas turned around, facing him, completely stripped of clothing. “Dean, it was a miracle. Something saved you. I just had to tell you. I need you to know that. That I prayed for you. That I care, Dean. I’m not sure what this is, but I need you to know that. I don’t expect you to reciprocate it, but there it is. I would tell you I love you, but I don’t want to ruin this.”

“Come here,” Dean spoke. Cas looked confused and conflicted as he walked over to the side of the bed that he was lying on. “Get up here.” The other man shook his head.

“I am going to hurt you.”

“No you aren’t, damnit, stand above me.”

Cas carefully climbed onto the bed, and looked down at Dean questioningly.

Dean cursed at Cas’s confusion and pulled himself up slightly, and then pulled down on Cas’s hips, and took the other man’s semi-hard cock into his mouth. Almost instantly, he could feel it harden as he shoved it down his own throat the best he could.

Soft groans came from Cas as he put his hands on the thankfully tall headboard to hold himself up. Dean looked up at the man and let his hands run up the back of his thighs as he licked up the underside of his dick from the base up. Not hard enough yet, Dean spit on Cas’s base and began to pump vigorously as he licked and kissed and sucked on his tip. Immediately, Cas let his head fall back with a moan.

“You like it?” He asked taking more into his mouth.

“More,” Cas demanded.

“Say please,” Dean teased.

Instead, Cas grabbed the other mans hair and shoved himself deeper down the man’s throat, leaving no more room for the hand that was pumping his cock. Surprised, Dean nearly gagged, and Cas pulled out, looking down at green eyes, apologetically.

Before he could say anything, however, Dean took the entire length back down his throat again and again, inviting Cas to take the lead. After a few moments, the man again roughly grabbed Dean’s light hair and began fucking himself down into Dean’s mouth and throat. “Ah, yes, fuck, Dean…” Again and again, Dean took him in, loving every gag on the large cock. He could feel himself getting hard as he began to taste precum on his tongue. After a while of this, Dean broke away gasping to take Cas’s balls in his mouth, licking and worshipping them as Cas began to pump himself with one hand, grasping onto the bed with the other.

“Dean, I’m close,” he begged, and Dean kept one hand on his balls as he took Cas deep into his throat again, sucking and humming every inch of Cas that he took, wishing there were more of him so that he could be overstuffed. “Dean, Dean, Dean,” he chanted, both hands now on the bed, holding his body up. As Cas began to gasp and moan louder and louder as Dean took him as deep as he could and let him cum deep in his throat, letting the warm and salty fluid fall through his body. His cock pulsing on his tongue, Dean sucked the other man dry, until Cas pulled himself from Dean’s mouth with a wet sound.

“Dean,” he gasped, falling onto the bed next to him, his hand already making his way down to Dean’s own pants, feeling the bulge in his pants.

“Cas, you don’t have to…” But Dean's pants were already down, and his erection was sticking out.

“I know,” Cas murmured against his tip, sending shivers through Dean’s body. Cas was a cruel lover, at first only kissing and lightly licking down the bottom or sides of Dean’s cock. Dean tried to take control as Cas had, but he could move enough to force him, and no matter what Dean said, or how he moaned, Cas would not let up on his teasing. When Dean would become completely belligerent, Cas would stop altogether, and instead pull down Dean’s pants further, and kiss along his inner thighs.

“When I am better, I am going to make you pay for this.” Cas took Dean in and with a wet noise released him again.

“Oh?” He challenged, kissing at his balls.

“Yes, fuck!”

“Maybe if you ask nicely,” Cas teased, Dean looked down to see amusement in his eyes as his lips hovered just over his head.

“Please!” Dean gasped, letting his head fall back into the pillow.

“Please what?”

“Please suck me off, Castiel. Let me come in your mouth and on your pretty lips. Oh God! Please!”

Cas just laughed as he let his head sink down onto Dean’s dick. He tried to buck up his hips, but Cas held him down as he took Dean in again and again, playing with his balls and one hand squeezing his butt.

“Oh, baby, yeah, right there. Please, please baby. Let me come.”

Cas picked up the pace, pumping Dean’s cock and sucking him off. “Yes, I’m going to, baby I’m going to…”

Cas stopped all his efforts and moved himself so that his eyes were looking right into Dean’s. “Please, please,” Dean chanted, grabbing at Cas’s hair and pulling him to his lips. Dean could taste himself, but didn’t care. He needed the closeness, the heat. Fuck he needed Cas. Why did he try to deny it before. He needed his angel. “Please, please baby,” he moaned into the kiss, biting at Cas’s lips and tongue. Satisfied, Cas moved back down to Dean’s hips and fucked him again and again with his mouth, until it was filled with Dean’s white fluid, and Cas swallowed most, but let some drip down onto his chest.

“Mmm, come here, baby,” Dean pleaded, grabbing Cas’s hair and pulling his back up, biting his jaw and shoulder and collar. Damn, he couldn’t get enough.

“Dean,” Cas stopped, pulling away. Dean protested, but Cas won, touching at something on his chest. “I think it’s fine,” he said, looking at the small, light red spot on his white bandages, “but I think we need to stop now. You need to sleep.” And like that, Cas had fallen back into his controlled demeanor, sliding into bed next to Dean.

“Wake me up if you need anything at all, okay?” He said, laying on his right side to look at Dean.

“Of course,” Dean nodded, already feeling exhaustion enter his body. “Goodnight, Cas.”

Dean was asleep before he could hear a response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry! You must all hate me. But here it is, and a few thousand words longer than those of the other chapters! I am already a good deal into chapter seven. My goal is to get seven done in a couple weeks, but we will see. But I really hope that you all enjoyed this chapter. And I had to bump it up a rating. So that is always nice.


End file.
